" 



*Q|Q VOL. XVIII. 



[DECEMBER.] 



No* 12. Tf* 



Published Monthly. August & Williams, Proprietors. 



J. E. WILLIAMS, Editor 




DEVOTED TO 



AGRICULTURE, HORTICULTURE, 



AND THE 




HOUSEHOLD ARTS, 



PRINTED AT RICHMOND, Va., 
BY MACFARLANE & FERGUSSON 
1858. 




SOUTHERN PLANTER.-ADVEHTISI.VG SHEET. 



CONTENT 8. 

The Economy of Farm-Made Putrescent 
Manures— In Reference to their Prepa- 
ration, Preservation, and best Applica- 
tion. (Concluded,) - . 

To Pickle Green Tomatoes, - 
On the Occurrence of the Phosphates in 
some of the Tertiary Deposits in Va,, - 
A Plea for Innocence, - 

Tobacco, 

Mr. Winston's Wheat Crop, * " 

Sorghum Molasses, 
How to Keep Sweet Potatoes, 
The Wonderful Nature of the Human 
Mind, Exhibited in the Power of Mind 
over Matter, - 
A Table, 

Tea, - . . 

Fat Pork as Human Food, - 
Hog Cholera, - . 4 > 

Mr. Everett's Remarks on the Horse at the 

late Springfield Fair, - . '■ 

The Preservation of Wine, - _ 'J 

An Item in Neat Farming.— A Chinese 

Garden, 
The Anthracite Coal Trade.— The Best 
Wealth.— To make Pure Apple Wine, - 
Humbuggery the Order of the Day.— A 
Hard and Durable Soap.— The Early 
Dead, - . . 

On the Stimulating Properties of Guano— 
A Reply to " X."— Staunton Nurseries, 
A Card.— Wool and Woolens, 
Manuring in the Hill.— Sociability, 
Governor Banks on the Farmer.— Height 

of Economy, - . ° 

The Chinese. — Hope — Work —Wait. — 

Falling Apples, 
Awards of Premiums at the Virginia State 

Agricultural So.ciety, 
Agriculture as a Profession.— Co-Opera- 
tion of the Wife.— To Preserve Cut 
Flowers, 
Perseverance, - 
Our Next Volume, 

The Fairs.— To Subscribers in Arrears, - 
Nottoway Club, - 
Hog Killing and Making Bacon, 
Action of Lime, - 
Circular, 

Uses of a Dead Horse, 
Premium Farm, - 

Human Life.— Live in Love; 'Tis Pleasant 
Living.— Ye can Conquer, if ye Will.— 
" Bv-and-By," 
Index" to Vol. XVIII., . 763. 



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MILCH GOWS AND DAIRY FARMING. 

The new work on this suhject hy C. L Flint S P f 
rotary of the Mass. State Board of Agriculture; con-" 
ams the most recent information on all .natters con- 
nected with the dairy, including a full explanation of 
Guenon's hiethod of selecting cow,, ,II e .nodes of ma- 
king the most celebrated English, Dutch and Italian 
Cheese, he diseases of dairy stock, &c, <fcc, fully il- 
lustrated throughout. I2.no. 416 pp. Publ shed hv 
MOORF T^T? & 59' PI '"«^'Vl.ia: 1 O* 
«n?P ^'i- N T Y ° rk - ; and f ° r sul ° b ^ Boolwelleia 
and Periodical agents in all parts of the country. 
November J85X — 2t 



Corn Shelters of Various^Kinds. 

The Cylinder for hand will shell 400 bushels per 
Hay, the same lor horse power and hand will shell he 
same by hand and 600 by horse power. The Reading 

wKtS/™ 1 " l * m '° ■*» babels. 
vviibAl FANS, and the usual variety of machi- 
nery on hand. H.M.SMITH, 
0C j8 ~ U M Main Street. 



R. M. NIMMO, 
GENERAL AGENT & STOREKEEPER 

OF THE 

VIRGINIA PENITENTIARY, 

No. 27 PEAUL STREET. 

Keeps constantly on hand a supply of the 

following articles manufactured at the Penitentiary of 
the most laithlul and substantial manner- BOOTS 
?, H v .^, B ^ 0GUElS » HARNESS, KEKSEVS 

*r ,o? rders p romi»Wy Executed. 

Nov 1858 — tf 




Devoted to Agriculture, Horticulture, and the Household Arts. 

Agriculture is the nursing mother of the Arts. 1 Tillage and Pasturage are the two breasts of 
— Xenophon. the State. — Sully. 



J. B. WILLIAMS, Editor. 



AUGUST & WILLIAMS, Prop'rs. 



Vol. XVIII. 



RICHMOND, VA., DECEMBER, 1858. 



NO. 12. 



[From the Transactions of the Virginia Stale Ag- 
ricultural Society.'] 

The Economy of Farm-made Putrescent 
Manures— In reference to their Prepar- 
ation, Preservation, and best Applica- 
tion. 

BY EDMUND RUFFIN, ESQ. 

[Concluded from page 649.] 

Top-dressing with straw and corn-stalks. 

There is another mode of top-dressing clover 
or pasture land, with dry wheat straw, which 
is an excellent and economical application, 
whenever the quantity of straw is greater 
than needed for food or litter, as is generally 
the case on all good wheat farms. When the 
threshing machine is in operation, and the 
carts are bringing in wheat from the field for 
its supply, it requires much labor to remove 
and to stack the threshed straw, as well, as to 
supply the sheaves for threshing. When the 
rick has been built so high, that the labor of 
bringing straw upon it is the heaviest, then it 
will be even less labor to send the straw back 
to the field, in return loads, not full enough to 
require much trouble to be put into the carts. 
The loads should be dropped on the poorer 
parts of the field upon which the wheat grew, 
and which I suppose to be set with clover, 
sown the same year. The hands, kept in the 
field to load the carts with wheat, may have 
enough spare time to spread the heaps of straw. 
45 



But if not, the spreading should be done soon, 
and evenly and thinly enough, not to smother 
any of the young ciover. The improvement 
will be manifest before winter. And if a spot 
so covered was an old gall, with scarcely any 
soil left, and of course very poor, the clover 
thereon will show to the line of the covering a 
decided superiority over the better though still 
poor land surrounding. Before August of the 
next succeeding year, the straw will be so well 
rotted under the shade of the covering clover, 
that it will offer not the least obstruction to 
the plough, in breaking up the land for wheat.* 
Straw, taken from the ricks, may be carried 
out and spread as manure at any time of 
winter, and in such times of extreme wetness 
of the earth, or hard freezing, when more pro- 
fitable work of teams cannot be done. The 
loads being necessarily light, may be drawn 
when the earth would be too soft for full loads. 
Straw should be spread very thin and evenly, 
or it will smother or check the growth of clover 
beneath ; and if much too thick, will kill all 
vegetation, and also offer obstruction to the 
plough even a year later. By very thin and 
even covering, all these evils are avoided, and 
according to my views, all the strength or 
richness of the straw as a fertilizer, whatever 



* The last preceding: section, headed ' ; The ap- 
plication and action of putrescent manures," be- 
ginning on page 17, and the above commencing 
paragraph only of the next section, (to the mark 
of reference to this note.) nearly as they here ap- 
pear, were before published in 1S44. E. R. 



706 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



that may be, is given to the land, and to its 
growth of plants. 

It is also an advantage, as before stated, that 
the manure from the cattle-pens may, like 
straw, be hauled out (in part) at early leisure 
times, and even when heavy rains has lately 
fallen, and would prevent other team-work. 
But this facility should be availed of very moder- 
ately, and cautiously. If the litter is taken from 
the pen early in winter, it has not then acted 
its full part as litter, and is little more than 
unrotted wet straw — requiring to be spread as 
thinly on clover to avoid injuring the growth, 
and having very little manuring or quicker 
action than dry straw. Again — if to save time 
and labor, whether early or late, we haul out 
manu'-e immediately after a heavy rain, there 
are two other evil effects. First, the manure 
is much heavier, (with water,) and the ground 
is wet and soft, so that two mules may be 
necessary to haul as much manure as one could 
draw well in dry weather. Secondly — when 
using manure as top-dressing, it is important 
to have a rain as soon as possible after the 
spreading, so as to stop the waste of volatile 
parts, and to convey them, and also all soluble 
parts, into the earth, and enable them to act 
immediately in feeding the roots of the clover. 
Now at whatever time the manure is carried 
out and spread, it may be a long and is always 
an uncertain time before the rain will fall. But 
nevertheless, it is not the less certain, that the 
longer after the last rain that manure is car- 
ried out, the less will be the time before the 
next rain will come. For these reasons, if 
we may choose the time for beginning to carry 
out manure, the dryer its then condition, and 
the longer after the last rain has fallen, the 
better for the performance of the operation, and 
also for its effect. 

Believing that to clover is the best and 
cheapest application of ordinary manure, that 
application has been in view generally, in my 
remarks. That manner of application is how- 
ever available, though for a very extensive, 
still a limited agricultural region — and of 
which the present southern limit has scarcely 
been carried out of Virginia. Even in the 
region of clover and wheat culture, this ap- 
plication of manure may not be always the 
most profitable, even if not impracticable. The 
clover crop may have failed — or the clover field 
for the year may be too far distant from the 
manure to bear the expense of the transporta- 
tion. Tobacco may be an important crop, and 
of course will demand all the farmer's manure. 
And, more generally, and especially farther 
southward, there may be little or none 
of either clover or wheat culture. In any of 
all such cases, when my preferred application 
cannot or ought not to be made, the proper 
change of direction, and also the necessary 
other changes of procedure should be made, 
avid for which every judicious farmer will judge 
best for his own particular circumstances. Still, 



even when making, and properly making, the 
most considerable changes of procedure, the 
farmer may not the less recognize the correct- 
ness of the principles here maintained, and 
profit by such recognition. It is unnecessary, 
(and would make this writing of tedious length,) 
for me to state examples, or offer particular ad- 
vice, on the various changes of procedure 
which may be made necessary by different cir- 
cumstances. 

So far, almost nothing has been said of the 
stalks of corn, which on all farms make so 
large a proportion of the materials for manure, 
and on many farms, amount to more than three- 
fourths of all the offal of crops. Of course, 
when brought to the winter cow-yard, as food 
and litter, they add enormously to the bulk of 
the prepared manure. Many of even careless 
and bad farmers, scrupulously use thus all their 
corn-stalks, cut off just above the ground. In 
past time, when the stalks were dug up with 
the roots, (for the earliest wheat-sowing,) un- 
der the idle notion that the grain would be 
injured, if the stalks were cut so soon, I have 
known the stalks Avith their roots thus full of 
earth, to be hauled to the cow-yard. All this 
enormous amount of hauling, in any usual 
mode, of stalks from the field to the barn-yard, 
is merely to haul them out again to some 
other field as manure, and when made five or 
six times heavier by being full of water. So 
far as these stalks were needed for food or for 
sufficient littering of the animals, this double 
hauling is proper for these purposes and is well 
remunerated. But so far as being superfluous 
in both these respects — the whole labor of 
their double transportation is thrown away. It 
would be far more profitable as well as cheaper, 
to leave the stalks where they grew, to act as 
manure, either ploughed under, or as top- 
dressing spread over the surface. Whatever 
manuring properties and value they possessed 
would (as it seems reasonable) be made use of 
in this way as well as any other. If the stalks 
gained any addition of richness in the cow- 
yard by absorbing animal matter, that portion 
was abstracted from the other litter which 
would otherwise as well have absorbed and re- 
tained all the animal matters. If the stalks 
are left on the land, and the ground is sown in 
wheat, as is most usual, the stalks may be 
spread over the same space on which they 
grew, after the corn has been gathered, and 
the wheat is sown, or even growing. Their 
spreading will be very small labor. If done 
early, and followed by a dry state of the land, 
it will be a good practice to let cattle browse 
on the stalks and at the same time trample the 
land just sown in wheat, which will be bene- 
ficial to that crop, and especially on sandy 
soils. This top-dressing of corn-stalks is in- 
deed a poor manuring. But it is presumed 
that they thus give to the crop and land all 
their own fertilizing value, .whatever that may 
be, and at no cost of carting. In the usual 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



'07 



mode, of double hauling, the cost is enormous, 
and the final application of no increased value 
as manure. 

With the succession of crops which belongs 
to my own (six-field) rotation, and my plan of 
corn culture, it is still more easy to use the 
corn-stalks as manure for the same field. Wheat 
does not follow corn ; and no other crop im- 
mediately. The field whic.i bore corn lies un- 
til the following May, when it is ploughed to 
sow peas for a green manuring crop. The 
corn stubble was generally cut off at two or 
three feet high, and this lower and heaviest 
part of the stalk is then easily ploughed under 
by two-mule ploughs. Of some parts of the 
field, the tops, above the ears, were only cut 
off, and removed for provender. And the re- 
maining high stalks, in the following spring, 
having roots then much weakened b}^ decay, 
are borne down by the weight of a trailing 
heavy chain attached to the plough, and are 
mostly covered by the furrow-slice which fol- 
lows after. A considerable proportion of both 
the high stubble and the taller stalks escape 
being so covered, and remain on the surface, 
and somewhat impede the harrows when cover- 
ing the sown peas. Also, other stalks, either 
buried but partially or very slightly covered 
by the ploughing, are drawn up by the subse- 
quent cross harrowing. But both these are but 
trivial difficulties; and the stalks so left on the 
surface are soon rotted by the aid of the shade 
and moisture of the ensuing cover of green 
pea-vines, and are so brought to the condition 
fit for manure. 

Some of the many persons who would deem 
wasteful and altogether improper, any omis- 
sion to bring so much of the manuring ma- 
terials, generally so used, to the barn-yard, may 
infer that I would also fail to use all other 
poorer and less accessible materials. But such 
is not the case. I make large use of pine 
leaves, from the woods, as litter for cattle, 
though for summer use only. The reasons 
for using' this poor material are these: 1st. 
The leaves are brought from wood-land not de- 
signed for future tillage, and therefore there is 
no robbing of one part of the arable land to 
manure another part. 2d. The raking up of 
the leaves, and hauling them, are jobs done 
mostly when the earth is so wet that no other 
team labor can be performed, and therefore 
the cost is very small. 3d. This material, the 
most difficult to reduce by fermentation, is 
therefore used as a litter for summer cow-pens, 
(and might be as well for stables,) in which 
fermentation is always too rapid, and straw so 
ised would be mostly wasted. These remarks 
)ring me to the consideration of the making of 
uanure in summer, which, under any other and 
isual circumstances and modes of procedure, 
s almost a total waste. 

Summer-made manure. 

The usual time for making the mixed ma- 



nure in cattle-pens, which constitutes much the 
larger proportion of all kinds secured during 
the whole year, is rarely more than four 
months. With better care and economy, or 
when most extended, it does not much exceed 
five months — from early in November to some 
time in April. There remain nearly or quite 
two-thirds of the year, during all of which 
time the cattle are better fed, on green food, 
and are in much better condition, if not gradu- 
ally approaching to fatness as will be the case 
on good land, not over-stocked. Under these 
circumstances, the excrements of the animals, 
in equal times, are much more abundant, and 
also much richer, than in winter. And con- 
sidering the longer time for producing these 
richer animal excretions, the summer supply, 
in quantity and quality, must be of at least 
three times as much value as that of winter — 
and if combined with as much litter in pro- 
portion, and preserved from waste as well, 
ought to supply three times as much of total 
bulk and richness of manure. Yet, in univer- 
sal practice, however varied, our summer ma- 
nuring by cattle does not cover one-fourth, 
(and more usually not one-tenth,) of as much 
land as would the winter cattle-pen, with but 
the restricted supplies of litter which I pro- 
vide, and have advised above. If using the 
like litter, (straw, or corn-stalks,) and whether 
abundantly or scantily, for a standing summer 
cow-pen, the then hio;h temperature, acting on 
the moist litter, would induce rapid fermenta- 
tion and speedy and wasteful decomposition of 
the mixed mass. Most of the substance and 
value of the materials would be wasted in the 
air. The cattle also, confined all night, and 
some hours of the day, on this putrifying and 
wasting bed, which makes a soft mire of filth 
in all wet weather, would be tormented by the 
myriads of stable flies which the filth would 
serve for breeding — and would suffer otherwise 
in health and condition by being kept on so 
foul a bed. These evil effects have soon stop- 
ped nearly all the attempts that have been 
made at various past times, and by many far- 
mers, to make manure in summer, by penning 
cattle on ordinary litter. 

Compared to this plan, (which probably few 
farmers have tried longer than one summer,) 
the ordinary procedure is far preferable, though 
still very wasteful of manure. This is to pen- 
cattle, without any litter, or with very little, on 
the ground designed to be manured, and re- 
moving the enclosing fence to the next adjacent 
ground, as soon as each enclosed space is sue-- 
cessively and sufficiently manured. In ordi- 
nary careful practice, the pens are thus shifted 
once a week. Reference to this usage was 
made in a foregoing page, and in another con- 
nexion, and some of the causes of waste stated. . 
Besides the waste by decomposition, in any 
mode of treatment, of the more solid excre- 
ments, and the still more complete loss of the 
urine of the cattle, dung-beetles {scaraboeus} 



708 



t THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



eat and so carry off, or deeply bury, nearly all 
of the ordure. Probably full three-fourths of 
all the animal manure is thus wasted in dif- 
ferent ways. Then, for the benefit of the small 
remainder, there is all the labor, and greater 
inconvenience, of the frequent moving of the 
enclosures. So little manuring and benefit 
have I gained from this plan of movable pens 
on naked ground, and with so much labor and 
inconvenience, and so much injury to the con- 
fined cattle, (and still more if to sheep,) that 
it was questionable whether there was any re- 
maining balance of clear profit. Under this 
impression, when my cattle could be kept at 
night in a separately enclosed field, I have pre- 
ferred, and have so ordered for several years 
in former time, that the cattle should be there 
left at large, rather than confine them at night 
in a pen. In the former case, the excre- 
ments were dropped at wide intervals and ir- 
regularly over the field, and so left as top-dress- 
ing, instead of being collected in the small 
space of a pen. The loss by the eating and 
working of beetles was the same, and very 
great, in both cases. But the comfort and con- 
dition of the cattle, when thus not confined, 
are so much better, that it is more than com- 
pensation for the irregular dispersion, and loss 
on that score, of manure. If the progress of 
decomposition, and loss by insect consumers, 
were equal, in both cases, the benefit to the 
land would certainly be greater, by the cattle 
not being penned. Where pens are used, there 
are no plants left alive to take up the fugitive 
products of decomposition. But when the ex- 
crements are dropped on a field, or pasture, 
however closely grazed, the close adjacent 
grass or weeds take up these gaseous or solu- 
ble products of decomposition, and are thus 
nourished and increased for future vegetable 
manure. Further, the early rank growths of 
these highly manured small spots are not pala 
table to animals, and so are left. In regard to 
sheep, the reasons against penning them have 
increased force. They are still more injured 
than cattle by being penned at night, in 
summer, as that is their best time for graz 
ing ; and when left at large, there is much less 
loss in their excrement from wasteful decom- 
position, none from insects, and it is much 
more separated and diffused over the ground. 
Acting upon these views, and notwithstanding 
my wish and efforts to increase my quantity of 
manure as much as can be done with profit or 
advantage, I rarely permit my sheep to bo 
penned in summer, and never, when they can 
be allowed to be left unconfined, without their 
d.ing injury to the crops. 

But in regard to cattle, there is a better 
course than either the use of ordinary naked 
pens, or straw-littered pens, though perhaps 
not better than the omitting to pen them. This 
is the plan that I have pursued for the few last 
years, and which will now be described. 

In winter and spring, at such times of very 



wet state of the earth that all tillage or manur- 
ing operations must be suspended, the wood- 
land is raked, and the dead leaves heaped. 
Wooden rakes, with six or at most eight teeth, 
are used, so that some of the most reduced 
vegetable matter is left by hasty and imperfect 
•aking. I always avoid the use of broad hoes, 
or any scraping off and removal of the surface 
of the ground, which very injurious abstrac- 
tion is usually made by farmers who use this 
material for manure. If the leaves only are 
removed, and say once in two years, and that 
from land not to be soon brought under tillage, 
it may be doubted whether any injury is done 
to the fertility of the raked wood-land. For 
such land has already received (from the super- 
abounding source of supply,) and taken up, as 
much of vegetable manure as the constitution 
of the soil will enable the soil to combine with, 
retain, or use for the growing trees. If more is 
left, in the fallen leaves, after their very slow 
rotting on poor land, the results of their decom- 
position will go to waste, without benefit to 
the land or to its growth. To produce all the 
benefit actually received, one-tenth of the crops 
of leaves probably would serve as well as the 
whole ; and the other nine-tenths might as 
well be removed for manure, to wherever want- 
ing, as to be left to rot and waste on the land 
which produces them. 

Pine leaves are much the best, to rake, to 
load, and to be applied to the fields. Land 
formerly worn out under exhausting tillage, 
and " turned out/' and now under a second 
growth of pines entirely, is the best by far for 
this operation. To such land, my labors of 
this kind have been mostly confined — and 
therefore I do not extend my statements to oak 
growth, or other than such as is mostly if not 
altogether of pine. 

However much valuing leaves for manure, 
still they make a very poor material, and also 
very slow to decompose. Therefore, unless 
ordinary farm litter could not be had in quan- 
tity sufficient for the comfortable bedding of 
the animals, I would never use leaves for 
winter littering of cow-pens or stables, or in 
any case where speedy decomposition of the 
manure is most desirable. But this quality of 
being slow to change and decompose gives to 
leaves, and especially pine leaves, a peculiar 
value for the littering of stables and stock-pens 
in summer, as there will be much less waste of 
fertilizing parts from all the different materials 
of the manure, and less inconvenience or injury 
to the animals thereon confined. 

As my present practice is but a few years 
old, and there has not been as yet sufficient op- 
portunities for observing and estimating re- 
sults, I will merely describe the principal ope- 
ration, the making of manure in summer in 
cow-pens littered with pine leaves. 

A strong and coarse fence is put around a 
square quarter acre. When a very wet state 
of the land, or remaining thin snow, or hard 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



700 



freezing, forbids other more profitable team 
labors, all the hauling force is put to bringing 
leaves from the small piles in the woods to the 
designed cow-pen. The loads are dropped as 
close to each other as may be — and equalized 
by some fork-work when required. If con- 
venient to continue so long at this work, the 
covering of leaves is made four or five feet 
thick, by the carts. The cattle (about 50 
in number) are brought on in April, when 
taken from their winter jen and dry food, and 
are kept in the summer pen every night, and 
some hours of the day, at morning and even- 
ing. Their treading brings the litter to a com- 
pact bedding of twelve or fifteen inches thick. 
This bedding absorbs the urine, and while re- 
taining it and securing it from loss, resists 
speedy decomposition from the rich and very 
putrescent admixture. This very valuable 
material is almost all lost, by rapid decompo- 
sition, in other ordinary and as rude modes of 
accumulating summer manure, whether with 
straw as litter, or in naked pens. The semi- 
fluid and the more solid excrements are soon 
dried, on this very open and dry surface of 
leaves — (although moist lower in the mass) — 
and in a few days more, the dried material is 
scattered and well mixed, by the treacling of 
the cattle, with the upper leaves, which also 
are cut up fine, by the same treading. The 
surface is a dry and firm bed, except immedi- 
ately after considerable rain, when the upper 
and reduced layer only, may become soft. As 
such wet spells usually permit other farm 
work ; they offer convenient times for removal 
of the so far prepared manure. At any rate, 
such removals should be made once or twice 
during the time of penning the cattle, and at 
the close. The upper layer of leaves, of a few 
inches deep, reduced both by the treading of 
the cattle, and by the partial decomposition, 
and holding intermixed nearly all the solid 
animal excrements, is easily separated from the 
unrotted lower mass, and presents a rich ma- 
nure, in the best state of reduction for use and 
speedy action. This should be applied imme- 
diately to any growing crop, the most con- 
venient in locality, or the most suitable in its 
state of growth or culture — and making the 
application, as much as circumstances permit, 
in accordance with the principles stated and 
maintained in the preceding pages. Each suc- 
cessive removal of this upper and well reduced 
layer of manure, exposes a new surface of the 
unrotted and firm bed of leaves remaining wet 
below, on which the cattle then find a clean 
and comfortable bed; and the same process 
goes on of converting another layer of the bed- 
ding to prepared manure, and next applying 
it. A whole season will probably not serve 
to get to the bottom of the still firm and un- 
rotted leaves. Any remnant, so left, will make 
so much of the supply of litter for the next 
summer's penning, in the same enclosure. 
Besides the advantages of this plan already 



stated, another was found, and which was as 
much unlooked for, as it is important to the 
object. Where the layer of pine leaves is as 
thick as it ought to be, say not less than six 
inches when well compacted by threading, the 
dung is not touched by the beetles, which so 
quickly attack and so nearly remove or con- 
sume all that is dropped on the earth in sum- 
mer. They cannot bore through the bed of 
leaves, to bury the dung in which their eggs 
are enclosed. And perhaps their instinct di- 
rects these insects not to go for feeding, where 
they cannot at the same time deposit their eggs. 
What is the cost of this plan, of accumula- 
ting summer-made manure, it is impossible for 
me to estimate. But the labor is mostly done 
when little else could be done of profitable 
farm operations. What is the measure of fer- 
tilizing effects, I know as little of as yet, hav- 
ing had no full opportunity for observing, and 
estimating the separate results. But of this I 
am perfectly assured — that the poor vegetable 
material is as cheaply and better prepared for 
use, and the rich animal matters are better pre- 
served from waste, than in any other known 
modes of using them. Therefore, as the labors 
are cheaply and conveniently supplied, if the 
vegetable material has any manuring value, it 
is unquestionable that the thus putting to use 
so much of otherwise useless vegetable mat- 
ter, and the saving from waste of so much 
highly putrescent and rich animal matter, must 
be not only an improving, but a highly profita- 
ble operation.* 



* On my farm, Marl bourne, of 6 fields, about 
125 acres each, (besides some SO acres of other 
and poor land recently brought in,) the manure 
carried out latterly has been as follows: 

1853, prepared manure, 1910 loads, (of two- 
mule carts,) estimated at 24 bushels (heaped) to 
the load. A large quantity of straw also carried 
out from the stacks, not counted in the above. 

1854, 1887 loads to October 1st. (there will be 
some 100 more by end of year.) of which only 
315 were from the summer cow-pen, littered with 
pine leaves. Much more summer manure had 
been made in 1853, on pen so littered, and more 
abundantly, and the cattle kept there longer. 
No woods' litter used elsewhere, and no other 
except the corn-stalks, &c, (leaving lower part,) 

i and wheat-straw, &c. All the straw of 1853 
| used for litter for this year's manuring. 

As stated above, the cattle kept latterly, are 
about 60 of all kinds. Horses and mules, 18 for 
last year. The sheep add nothing to the pre- 
pared manure, and the hogs (few in number) 
only while fattening for slaughter. Then accord- 
ing to the slight and partial use made (as recom- 
mended above) of collected stalks and straw, (or 
parts of corn and wheat offal only,) these years' 
manuring, (at a half load for each 11 yards 
square, or 20 loads to the acre,) covered — for 
1853, at 12 bushels, llXll yards, 95 acres— 1854, 
to October 1st, 94 acres. The offal of stalks, 
straw, &c, is obtained from about 125 acres of 
land yielding (now) 35 to 38 bushels of corn — 






710 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



Natural manuring, with green or dry vegetable 
materials. 

The manuring labors which I have recom- 
mended, and with the omission of much that 
is done by other practical farmers— and omit- 
ting very much more that is directed by closet 
farmers, or writers who are not farmers — will 
(according to the productiveness of the farm in 
supplying materials) serve to cover as thickly 
as is proper and safe to the then growing vege- 
tation, from one-half to more than the whole of 
one field of a five or six field rotation. But all 
this amount of manuring, though much ex- 
ceeding what is usually done on most farms, is 
much less than another kind of manuring, and 
which I have as yet touched only incidentally, 
and as necessarily connected with the collec- 
tion or avoidance of materials for prepared 
manures. I speak of what may be correctly 
designated as natural manuring — which is ma- 
nuring land by its own growth of plants, left 
on it for this purpose — and either turned under 
by the plough, green or dry, or left as top- 
dressing to decay on the surface of the ground, 
until the next covering of tillage. But vast as 
is this resource and supply of manure, and 
great as its value — and important and interest- 
ing as would be the proper treatment of the 
subject — I must pass it by with but a few 
slight and hasty remarks. For though this is 
truly a branch, and, in our usual circum- 
stances, the most important branch of putres- 
cent manuring, it is not so understood in com- 
mon parlance — in which the term " putrescent 
manures" is restricted to matters collected and 
prepared for use, or otherwise obtained by pur- 
chase, already prepared, from without the limits 
of the farm. While deferring to, and being- 
much restrained in the range of my remarks 
by this popular understanding, still I have in- 
cluded as a manure unmixed and dry straw, 
and would as much include not only the richer 
clover and pea- vines, sown for manuring crops, 
but also all grass and weeds grown and left un- 
grazed, and either ploughed under, or left to 
decompose on the surface among other growing 
plants. 

The leguminous or pod-bearing family of 
plants are the most valuable for manuring crops. 
Of these, red clover is the best, wherever soil, 
climate, and other circumstances, concur to 



and 250 acres of wheat, yielding nearly 20 
bushels, average. One field (125 acres) of broad- 
cast peas, turned under, and one field of clover 
(or weeds, where clover fails to grow,) for wheat 
— and one field of weeds (partially grazed) for 
corn. 

From midsummer, 1854, to October 3d, the 
cattle had not been penned, at all, when grazing 
on a separately enclosed pasture. I now deem 
iheir remaining at large, in summer, in benefil 
to their health and condition, of more value than 
thai of collecting their manure in pens, whether 
naked or littered, for the same time. 



render its growth certain and abundant in pro- 
portion to the fertility of the land. But so 
precarious is the growth of this plant in the 
tide-water region of Virginia, even on good or 
calcareous soils, (and it is almost hopeless on 
any other lands,) that its value is equalled by 
the Southern pea, and more and more exceeded 
by it, as proceeding southward. But whatever 
may be the respective values of these two most 
valuable of manuring crops, neither of them 
can be a substitute for the other. Clover re- 
quires to be sown on wheat, or oats, and on 
lani cleansed of other grasses and weeds by 
preceding tillage; and at least eighteen months 
will be required to obtain the first useful pro- 
ducts. Peas, sown broad-cast for a manure- 
crop, demand a distinct ploughing of the land 
preparatory to the seeding; and the crop 
reaches full maturity and commences decay in 
four months. Therefore, the choice between 
these two manuring crops, in each particular 
case, on soil and in climate suitable for both, 
must be directed by the conditions of the 
place in the rotation of crops, and the order of 
their succession. Whenever a heavy cover of 
either of these leguminous crops can be grown, 
(red clover, or any of the numerous varieties 
of the Southern field pea,) and ploughed under, 
the vegetable cover makes a good manuring to 
the field. 

But it is not only in these or any other sown 
or tilled crops, that we may find green or dry 
vegetable manuring. Every plant, whether 
grass or weed, shrub or tree, which grows, 
dies and rots in or upon the soil, according to 
its texture and constitution, gives more or less 
of fertilizing manure to the soil, and to its sub- 
sequent growth. However poor and scant may 
be the natural growth of weeds on arable land, 
when left untitled for a time, it is so for a ma- 
nure, and the most abundant and cheapest 
putrescent manure that could be furnished on 
any farm, to a broad extent, of poor land. And 
if, by preventing the grazing of live-stock, this 
natural growth is allowed all to act as manure, 
and for sufficient intervals of rest to the fields 
between exhausting crops, the land, if before 
impoverished, will gradually rise in fertility to 
such higher grade as its earthy and chemical 
constitution will admit. This poor but cheap 
manuring is best suited for the commencement 
and earlier progress of improvement of much 
impoverished lands. After some length of 
time, the entire omission of the grazing and 
trampling of the fields by animals would be- 
come a disadvantage to the subsequent tilled 
crops. Besides, on lands become productive, 
it will be more profitable to substitute for the 
manuring with weeds, other manuring by peas, 
clover, and stock-yard and stable manures. 

The rude system of manuring with putres- 
cent matters, here described and recommended, 
I readily admit would be unsuitable to a highly 
advanced condition of agriculture, and of high- 
priced lauds and low-priced labor — as in Eng- 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



711 



land and Belgium. The elaborate methods of 
manure-making approved in these countries, 
even when most proper there, would be not less 
unsuitable and unprofitable for our country, 
under its present circumstances of cheap land 
and products, and costly labor. 

General remarks on compost manures. 

It being my purpose in this writing to treat 
exclusively of putrescent (or organic) manures, 
and those of farm production, it was proper 
that I should avoid the other great and impor- 
tant classes of mineral manures, and of pur- 
chased manures, whether mineral or putres- 
cent. There is another important class, which 
is of intermediate origin and composition, of 
which it may be doubted whether the treat- 
ment should be included, or not, in an essay on 
putrescent manures. But in my case, there is 
another and sufficient reason for omitting any 
particular account of this subject of compost 
manures, in my admitted want of all practical 
experience, and even very limited personal 
observation of the practices of others, in this 
manner of manuring. 

The preparing of compost or mixed manures, 
compounded of different and various ingredi- 
ents, has long been approved and extensively 
practiced in Europe; and latterly, has been 
carried on with zeal and profit in different and 
far separated parts of the United States. The 
most extensive practices in the Northern States, 
(where peat is the main material,) I know of 
only thorough published accounts. In Talbot 
county, Maryland, and in Edgecombe county, 
North Carolina, I have lately seen other ope- 
rations of composting, and heard of effects, 
which left on my mind no doubt of great im- 
provements and profits being thereby obtained. 
As proper, in my admitted want of practical 
knowledge on this subject, I will offer merely 
a few general remarks, to direct attention to a 
practice which is almost unknow r n in Virginia, 
and invite experiment — and not to presume to 
offer instruction from a source confessedly so 
void of information. 

There have been opposers of composting as 
long as approving practisers. The great diffi- 
culty and objection is the great labor of mixing 
the different materials, with the incidental re- 
peated handlings and transportations of the 
manure or the heavier materials. Every merely 
practical man would be at once impressed with 
this difficulty ; and even some theoretical or 
scientific writers have thus been arrayed against 
the expediency of composting. All such ob- 
jectors have assumed the ground that any ma- 
nuring substance, which would be useful as a 
material and ingredient of a compost heap, 
would be as beneficial if applied to the land 
separately; and by each one being applied 
separately or alone, all the double handlings 
and transportations, would be avoided, and 
more than half the labors of composting saved. 
Such were the views of Arthur Young, for- 



merly respected as one of the highest agricul- 
tural authorities. Perhaps forty years ago, 
the reading of this opinion in one of his works, 
confirmed my prejudices against the system of 
making of compost manures. It was not until 
very lately that my personal observation, and 
reports to me of practical results, on the places 
where obtained, led me to doubt the truth of 
my long maintained grounds of objection. 
There is no denying that practical (and many 
merely practical) formers who use composts 
largely, are convinced that they profit greatly 
thereby. One, or a few farmers, of easy faith 
and sanguine temperament, might for a few 
years deceive themselves in regard to the re- 
sults and the profits of this practice. But that 
would be impossible in regard to whole com- 
munities, embracing farmers of every grade, 
and acting for long time. Such has been the 
case in Talbot, and more recently in Edge- 
combe. The labors so directed are of enorm- 
ous amount in both these localities; and it is 
impossible that they could have been so long 
persevered in, unless the operations produced 
profitable returns, on the general average. 
This inference as to general and usual results, 
is not opposed to the very probable facts of 
many particular misapplications of labor on 
materials being of more cost than value. 

But besides this, the best proof of the profit 
of any system of manuring, furnished in the 
long continued practice and satisfactory re- 
turns of the practical farmers — there are theo- 
retical views and sound reasons for supposing 
new values to be created, or the old much in- 
creased, by the mere intermixture of some dif- 
ferent substances, and the new chemical changes 
and combinations thus favored and induced. 
Also, (and this is a very important matter of 
economy,) materials the most putrescent and 
Therefore, the most liable to w\aste and destruc- 
tion, when alone, by being intermingled with 
a great mass of other inert material, may have 
the otherwise fleeting products of decompo- 
sition arrested, fixed, and saved for fertilizing 
action. Again — organic matter, in some con- 
ditions, is not liable to decomposition — or is 
extremely slow to decompose — as peat earth, 
marsh muck, pine and other leaves from acid 
soils, saw-dust, used as tanner's bark, &c. Yet 
all such matters are almost entirely organic, 
and also putrescent under other conditions, 
and wholly unfit for alimentary manures. 
When such substances are mixed with much 
smaller proportions of others the most putres- 
cent, as flesh, of carcases, fish garbage, blood 
from slaughtered animals, human excrements, 
and those of fowls, rich stable manure, &c, 
the latter act as quickening leaven to the great 
mass, and decompose it, or render it decom- 
j posable, and at the same time, by the mass of the 
■■ great materials, the most putrescent are me- 
1 chanically enclosed and preserved. Further — 
if mild lime be added and diffused throughout 
! the mass, chemical action, altogether conserva- 



12 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



tive, will be added, and in far greater power to 
the above mechanical action.* Any other 
fertilizing minerals, or neutral salts, added in 
small quantities and thoroughly diffused, will 
be thus extended, and in equal diffusion, over 
broad surfaces of land. Such will be the bene- 
ficial use, if no other, of additions of gypsum, 
bones, common salt, and ashes or other sub- 
stances supplying potash, nitre, &c. Compost 
heaps, made of these and of any other mate- 
rials capable of supplying manuring princi- 
ples, are once or oftener cut down, and inter- 
mixed more thoroughly. Those containing lime 
and also animal or other rich organic matters, 
are in fact artificial nitre beds — in which the 
production of nitre, obtained mostly from the 
atmosphere, is continually in progress. f In 
this way, of use, (and even without the ad- 
dition of any animal matter,) lime in compost 
(as supposed) has been found very beneficial 
in France, in quantities less than twelve bushels 
(of lime) to our acre. With all my exalted 
opinion of the value of lime as manure, these 
effects, in such smaller quantities, were incom- 
prehensible to me, until viewing the effects in 
connexion with the nitre-producing action of 
lime in composts. 

Many of (us and I for one) have used as 
manure, and alone, marsh mud, or other earth 
largely composed of inert vegetable matter, and 
in almost every case without remunerating re- 
turns. Yet the same, or much poorer earthy 
material, is used after being prepared in com- 
posts, with unquestionable good effect and 
profit. This material has been largely used in 
compost in Talbot, Maryland; and there and 
also in Edgecombe, North Carolina, the princi- 
pal proportion of most compost heaps, is the 
much poorer earth of ditch-banks, head-lands, 
and other scrapings of margins of fields, and 
corners of worm-fences. Indeed, I have seen 
in large use earthly materials apparently so 
poor in fertilizing matter, that nothing but the 
reported practical good effects of like manures 
could convince a stranger that such labors 
would not result in absolute loss. 



To Pickle Green Tomatoes. 

Chop the tomatoes fine, adding a few green 
peppers, (and onions if you like them,) add one 
tea cup of fine salt to a gallon of tomatoes; 
let it stand twenty-four hours ; then drain it 
through a cullender, adding two table-spoons 
of black pepper, three of fine mustard, two of 
cloves, and one of cinnamon. Put in a jar 
and cover with vinegar. 



* This principal agency of calcareous earth 
(or carbonate of lime) in aiding fertilization, is 
maintained and established in Essay on Calca- 
reous Manures, pages 92-7, of 5th Edition. 

|See i'nil view of this particular action, in 
F^ay on Calcareous Manures, pp. -.203-7 of 5th 
Edition. 



From the Transactions of the Va. St. jigr. So. 

for 1858. 
[published by order or THE executive com- 
mittee.] 

On the Occurrence of the Phosphates in 
some of the Tertiary Deposits of Vir- 
ginia. 

To the Executive Committee of the Virginia 
State Agricultural Society : 

Gentlemen. — Some years since, I had the 
honour to submit to your body a report upon 
the composition of some of the marls and 
other deposits belonging to the tertiary region 
of Virginia. (Transactions of Va, S. Agr. So., 
pages 62 and 179, Vol. I.) Under the head of 
"Olive and other Earths," several analyses 
were given, in which I report the presence of 
phosphoric acid in appreciable quantity, and 
in one instance, I found 1.18 per cent., equiva- 
lent to 2.55 per cent, of bone phosphate of 
lime. In every case a solution of the earth in 
dilute hydrochloric acid was made, and filter- 
ed ; the phosphoric acid was subsequently pre- 
cipitated as the phosphate of iron, by means of 
the acetate of soda. Knowing that all of these 
earths contained iron, no compound of iron 
was added to the solution, because I believed 
the quantity of iron present sufficient for the 
separation of the whole of the phosphoric acid. 
Subsequent experience in the analysis of ma- 
nures containing the phosphates, in which the 
chloride of iron had to be added in order that 
the phosphoric acid might be separated from 
the other constituents, led me to think that in 
the analysis of the earths above referred to, 
the proportion of iron might have been too 
small for the object desired, and that in con- 
sequence of my not observing the re-actions as 
carefully as after experience proved to be ne- 
necessary, I might not have separated the whole 
of the phosphoric acid from these earths, and 
that therefore the percentage reported was 
probably too low. 

Having several samples of these earths still 
in my possession, some of which I never had 
examined, I subjected them to analysis, adding 
the chloride of iron to the solution in each case 
until I was certain that I had precipitated all 
the phosphoric acid. I soon found that nearly 
all of them contained appreciable quantities 
of the phosphate of lime, while some of them 
contained from 5 to 7 per cent. This fact hav- 
ing been communicated to Mr. E. Rufiin, the 
President of the Society, he very kindty un- 
dertook to procure other specimens for me from 
the various localities within his reach. A num- 
ber of these specimens have been analyzed for 
the phosphates, with varying results, all of 
which will be found below. 

Whilst engaged (in 1853) upon the analy- 
sis of the marls, Mr. Ruffin sent me one or 
more samples of " olive earth/' containing nu- 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



713 



mcrous smooth black pebbles, some of which 
were casts of shells, &c, he remarked that 
wherever they had been applied, they seemed 
to have produced good effect, and suggested 
the idea that perhaps they were rich in phos- 
phate of lime. Their appearance, however, led 
me to think that they were nothing but impure 
carbonate of lime, and when a strong acid was 
dropped upon them, the effervescence which 
took place was so marked, that I was confirm- 
ed in my belief, and thought that I should be 
wasting my time to subject them to analysis. 
After completing the analysis of the " olive 
earths," I had occasion to throw a few of these 
pebbles into muriatic acid ; finding that com- 
plete solution soon took place, and that the ef- 
fervescence was not so vigorous #&s I had a 
right to expect on the assumption that the 
whole, or nearly the whole, was carbonate of 
lime, I determined to subject them to analysis 
for the phosphates. I find them all to contain 
the phosphate of lime in large proportions. 

The numbers which follow are simply given 
for convenience in reference. 

No i. — " Olive earth," from Retreat, (from 
Dr. C. C. Cocke's,) reported upon, and referred 
to at No. 19 of my first report, (page 69.) This 
specimen contains 6.86 per cent, of phosphate 
of lime. 

No. ii. — " Olive earth," same locality, and 
reported upon in former report as No. 18, (page 
C9.) This contains 3.92 per cent, of the phos- 
phate. 

No. in.—" Olive earth," Marlbourne Farm, 
(No. 17, on pages 69, 70, first report,) from 
eight and a half to nine feet below top of blue 
clay, (No. 16,) contains 5.012 per cent. 

No. iv. — " Olive earth" containing black 
gravel, — Marlbourne, (No. 17, pages 69, 70,) — 
contains, after the removal of the gravel, 5.15 
per cent, of phosphate of lime. 

No. v. — Blue clay overlying the " olive 
earth," Marlbourne, (No. 16, page 69,) ob- 
tained by Mr. Ruffin by boring. The first five 
feet contained only traces of phosphate of lime; 
the sixth foot contained 4.80 per cent. 

No. vi. — " Olive earth," Marlbourne Farm, 
(No. 17, pages 69, 70,) also obtained by boring, 
— specimen at the depth of eight feet below 
top of blue clay, (No. 16. pages 69 70,) con- 
tained 5.97 per cent. 

No. vii. — Same as No. vi., (No. 16, pages 
69, 70,) but at the depth of nine feet below j 
top of blue clay, 16,) contains 7.27 per cent. 

No. viii. — Same as No. vi. and vii., but at i 
the depth of nine and a half feet below top of 
blue clay, (No. 16, pages 69, 70;) this con- 
tains 7.41 per cent, of the phosphate. 

No. ix. — Black pebbles taken from " olive 
earth," No. iv. After being crushed and thor- 
oughly mixed, they were found to contain 56 
per cent, of phosphate of lime ! 

Nos. x., xi., xii., xiii. and xiv. were procured 
by Mr. Ruffin from T. G. Turner, Springfield, 



Hanover county, and all from the same expos- 
ed section on the Pamunky river. 

No. x. — "Olive earth," at the depth of four 
feet below its top, contains traces only of phos- 
phoric acid. 

No. xi. — " Olive earth," at a depth of eight 
feet, a very little black gravel mixed with it, 
contains 1.58 per cent, of phosphate of lime. 

No. xii. — " Olive earth," at a depth of ten 
feet, six inches above gravel bed No. xiii., con- 
tains 3.23 per cent, of the phosphate. 

No. xiii. — "Olive earth," containing black 
gravel — stratum from three to five inches 
thick. This, after the gravel was crushed, and 
thoroughly mixed with the earth, gave me 
24 per cent, of phosphate of lime ! 

No. xiv. — Marl, two and a half feet below 
No. xiii., contains more or less black gravel. 
The gravel was crushed and mixed with the 
marl ; the mixture, on analysis, gave 7.89 per 
cent, of phosphate of lime. 

No. xv., xvi. and xvii. — " Olive earths," from 
the same section, on the farm of W. A. Brax- 
ton, Hybla, King William county. 

No. xv. contains 1.37 per cent., No. xvi., 
1.58 per cent., and No. xvii. 0.93 per cent, of 
the phosphate. 

Nos. xviii. and xix. — "Olive earths," from 
Chericoke, King William county, selected by 
Dr. Tomlin Braxton. 

No. xviii. is ten or twelve feet thick, over- 
laid by nine or ten feet of earth, and contains 
7.41 per cent, of phosphate of lime. 

No. xix., about four feet in thickness, and 
overlaid by four feet of earth, contains 2.54 
per cent. 

No. xx. — " Olive earth," from Bassetterre, 
King William county, selected by G. W. Bas- 
sett, contains 3.77 per cent, of phosphate of 
lime. 

No. xxi. — " Olive earth," from same locali- 
ty, contains 3.64 per cent. 

No. xxii — " Olive earth," from G. W. Bas- 
sett's, Farmington, Hanover county, contains 
6.38 per cent. 

I may remark that the "olive earth," No. 
xiii., and marl, No. xiv., owe their large per 
centage of phosphate of lime to the presence 
of black gravel. Mr. Ruffin informs me that 
numerous beds of Eocene marl contain, in thin 
bands, or layers of the marl, more or less of 
this gravel, but always in small quantities. In 
all such cases, we should expect the marls to 
contain very considerable amounts of phos- 
phates of lime, in proportion to the quantity 
of the black gravel. 

Up to within a very short time of my mak- 
ing my first examination of the " olive earths," 
they had all been regarded as worthless. Mr. 
Ruffin, however, having heard that a very suc- 
cessful experiment had been made by the use 
of some, called my attention to them, and sent 
me some samples for analysis. Since the pub- 
lication of my report, various trials of these 
earths have been made, and some of them have 



714 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER, 



been very successful. Mr. Ruffin, who has 
taken a very lively interest in the matter from 
the first, informs me that he will make further 
inquiries in relation to their effects as manures, 
and has kindly offered to communicate to the 
Society the results of these inquiries, as an ap- 
pendix to this report. 

Respectfully, your obedient servant, 

WILLIAM GILHAM. 
Va. Mil Institute, Sept. 29th, 1858. 



APPENDIX. 

The discovery made by Prof. Gilham, and 
announced in the foregoing report, of the pres- 
ence of considerable proportions of phosphate 
of lime in the " olive earth," is a very inter- 
esting fact in scientific agriculture, and likely 
to be also of great practical value to all farmers 
who may have access to earth of this kind, and 
know its quality and value. The "olive earth" 
is the usual overlying layer on the eocene marl 
of the Pamunkey, and also of the peculiar mio- 
cene marl of Hampstead, in Kent, described at 
pp. 491, 2 and 3 of 5th edition of Essay on 
Calcareous Manures ; and which marl is also 
found at Chericoke, and at Hybla, in King 
William — from the overlying olive earth of 
which two farms some of the specimens were 
obtained and analyzed. What I knew, and sup- 
posed, of the olive earth, was stated at some 
length in the work just named, (pp. 479, 480, 
481,) and my reasons, formed in advance of 
any analysis, for supposing that phosphate of 
lime was contained therein. Prof. Gilham's 
earlier examinations (in 1853) showed the 
presence of a small per centage of phosphate 
of lime in most of the specimens of olive earth 
I had then selected for him. (See his earlier 
communications, pp. 62 and 179, Trans. V. S. 
A. S., 1853.) Even this was of practical im- 
portance, in conjunction with the sulphate of 
lime, potash and soda, which he also found. 
But his recent analyses, cleared of the cause of 
error, which, as Prof. Gilham states, before con- 
cealed much the larger portion of the sub- 
stance present, have served to show much 
larger proportions in some of these olive earths, 
and in most of the specimens which, at his 
request, I had sent to him. It appears, how- 
ever, that the proportions vary very much in 
different specimens and places — from less than 
1 to more than 7 per cent, of phosphate of 
lime — and that important differences, in this 
respect, are not only found in different remote 
exposures and localities, and different beds, 
but a,t different heights in the same bed and 
section, and where there is no difference of ap- 
pearance to the eye. 

Previous to the trials made of olive earth as 
manure, by two of my neighbours, Messrs. 
John Bcale and Henry Jones, and their re- 
markable results, (to which Prof. Gilham refers 
as ) icing stated to him by me, and which I had 



reported in the nature of "olive earth," just 
referred to,) this earth had been deemed of no 
value. Almost every marler in this neighbour- 
hood had to dig through more or less of this 
earth to uncover his marl, and with much la- 
bour, and it was thrown aside as worthless. 
In later years, the olive earth has been carried 
out and spread as manure, like the marl, and 
generally on the same surfaces. Since I learn- 
ed the remarkable results of the more recent 
analyses, (above stated,) I have sought to 
learn more of the experienced practical effects. 
But there have been no accurate experiments 
made, of the effects, either of olive earth alone, 
or in any certain mixtures with marl— except 
the one I formerly saw and reported, of Mr. 
Henry Jones. His experiment was made with 
Dr. C. C. Cocke's olive earth, (above designat- 
ed as Nos. i. and ii. in the present report.) 
Mr. John Beale has made much greater use 
from the same bed — and he only (except Mr. 
Jones) had then used the olive earth alone, 
without marl previously having been applied 
on the same surface. Mr. Beale informs me 
that he has always found great benefit from his 
applications. He, and four others of my neigh- 
bours, who have since used this manure large- 
ly, but on land also marled, (and without any 
accurate observation of the different effects,) 
all are well satisfied with their results. But it 
is true that there is nothing more definite than 
mere general opinions as to the degrees of ben- 
efit. Also, the olive earths that contain the 
smallest proportions of phosphate of lime, 
seem (to these loose observations) to have been 
as satisfactory in supposed effects on the farm 
on which they were used, as the richest in that 
ingredient elsewhere. 

My own use of this earth, (of the Marl- 
bourne bed,) marked 17 in Prof. Gilham's first 
report (Trans., Vol. I., p. 69, 70,) was very 
large — but it was applied before I knew its 
value, on land also marled, and without the 
care necessary to have accurate comparative 
results. I can only say that from general ob- 
servation of products, I believe that considera- 
ble benefit, has been produced, over and above 
all that is due to the marl. But I made noth- 
ing that deserves to be called a proper experi- 
ment, and therefore have no accurate or relia- 
ble results. 

Still, on the whole, after learning the large 
proportion of phosphate of lime in our olive 
earth, I am surprised and disappointed that 
the benefit the land and crops, from this very 
valuable and fertilising ingredient, should not 
have been greater and more striking, even 
from such irregular applications. The very 
great value of phosphate of lime as manure 
has been well and long established. Bones, 
which contain only about 56 per cent, of 
phosphate of lime, have, for this ingredient, 
been used very extensively, and with great ef- 
fects, in England, and bought for manure at 
three shillings sterling the bushel. The usual 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



715 



quantity of olive earth applied here was 400 
jusbels to the acre, which would give (of the 
Vlarlbourne bed) from 20 to 25 bushels of 
)hosphate of lime. Perhaps our soils in this 
leighbourhood may naturally contain nearly 
mough of this essential ingredient, so that an 
idditional quantity would not produce very 
narked early benefit. I formerly supposed that 
mr peculiar eocene marl (judging from its ef- 
fects) contained phosphate of lime — which, if 
rue, would explain the small effect of olive 
larth on land previously and heavily marled 
rom such beds. But I am compelled to give 
tp this former and long cherished belief, inas- 
auch as Prof. Gilham, in sundry trials, has 
lot found more than a trace of phosphate of 
ime in the Marlbourne marl, or in any other 
f this neighbourhood. 

All the specimens of olive earth of which 
he analyses are reported above, were overlying 
ocene marl, except those from Hybla and Cher- 
soke. 

Several different circumstances concurred to 
ause me to suspect, previous to 1853, that the 
lack gravel of the olive earth and marl was 
ich in phosphate of lime. I had seen such 
;ravel, though in small quantities, in all eocene 
eds ; and this marl I had found much more 
ertilizing than the miocene, when equal in 
heir carbonate of lime, the main fertilizing 
ngredient, and usually the only one in mio- 
ene marls. The same gravel is still more 
bun dan t in some parts of the olive earth. I 
ad heard it remarked by users of this earth, 
hat it seemed to be the better as manure 
rhere the black gravel was most abundant. I 
iad evidences (in some specimens which I 
orwarded to Prof. Gilliam) that this gravel, 
hough now extremely hard, had once been 
uite soft, so as to fill the interior of spiral 
hells, like the softest clay. 1 had also read 
hat coprolites, the petrified excrements of extinct 
aarine animals, had been found in such quan- 
ities in certain beds of green-sand in England, 
hat they were separated, and ground to pow- 
.er to be sold for manure — as these coprolites 
onsisted mostly of phosphate of lime. Also, 
n Prof. Emmons' first report of his geological 
urvey of North Carolina, he stated having 
ound coprolites in the eocene marl on Cape 
^ear river near Wilmington. Putting all these 
hings together, I thought it more than prob- 
ble that the small black gravel in our olive 
arth, and in eocene marl, was coprolites, and 
herefore mainly of phosphate of lime, and in- 
icating more, invisible, diffused through the 
>ed. This has been proved to be correct, by 
'rof. Gilliam's recent analysis of this gravel, 
so far as the qnantity of these coprolites may 
;o, they contain as much phosphate of lime as 
•ones, and add more than half of their weight 
f phosphate of lime to the olive earth or marl 
u which they are imbedded — and so much in 
,ddition to whatever there is in a finely divid- 
d state, and reported in sundry specimens 



from which the black gravel had been separat- 
ed. But though this gravel in some rare cases 
lies thickly through very thin layers of the 
earth, it is never abundant enough to be sepa- 
rated for grinding — and its extreme hardness, 
and very slow disintegration ki the soil, as 
well as the small quantity of all yet observed, 
will prevent its presence adding much to the 
value of the whole quantity of the finely di- 
vided portion in phosphate of lime in the olive 
earth. 

EDMUND RUFFIN. 
Marlbourne, Oct. 7th, 1858. 



For the Planter 

A Plea for Innocence. 

There is a large class of innocent suf- 
ferers in our country, which deserves 
more of human sympathy than it is accus- 
tomed to receive. This is the class of 
girls, growing up to womanhood, in the 
midst of that strange process, called edu- 
cation. Large and costly establishments 
are constantly being erected all over the 
country, devoted to this purpose, and the 
girls of thousands of families, are sedu- 
lously congregated within them, to un- 
dergo, for about ten months in the year, 
the discipline of the boarding school. 
Many of these girls become proficient in 
learning to such an extent as to excite the 
admiration of friends ; and evidences of 
their success are furnished us in long, 
newspaper columns, of exquisite speci- 
mens of composition, and in the ample 
pages of annual reports. Truly, we must 
be in a fair way to become a learned 
people. Our admiration is challenged of 
so great a good, and while the daily press 
resounds w 7 ith its praises, we are scarcely 
at liberty to withhold it. But to the intel- 
ligent admirer of female excellence, this 
admiration is not unmingled with commis- 
seration. He sees and admires mental 
cultivation, and the requisition of knowl- 
edge, but he becomes fully aware, at every 
glance into these institutions, of the inu- 
tility of mental improvement without its 
necessary adjuncts, bodily health and 
vigour. While the former appears to be 
boastingly secured, the want of the latter 
inspires him with the deepest compassion. 

It requires only a modicum of physio- 
logical knowledge — indeed it requires only 
a little observation and common sense- — 
to enable us to place a proper estimate 
upon the importance of health, and to 
calculate upon the absolute certainty of 



716 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



enfeebled constitutions, resulting from 
overworked minds in immature bodies. 
Look at the routine of duty in our best 
model boarding schools. From early 
morn till close of day, and many times 
until bed-hours, the constant requirement 
is study, study, study. In profound si- 
lence, seated like statues upon hard 
benches or chairs, which obsti uct the 
free circulation of fluids in the lower 
limbs, with benumbed and often cold feet, 
with an aching breast and back, and with 
throbbing temples, girls in these schools 
are expected to carry on six or eight 
branches of study at the same time, to be 
perfect in every lesson, and to send home 
weekly, or monthly, satisfying evidences 
of the success of this tread-mill work of 
an excited brain. Sleep sufficient for the 
health of growing bodies is often denied 
them; unpalatable, and therefore unwhole- 
some food is thrust into the stomach in a 
given number of minutes ; the calls of na- 
ture are disregarded, and no effort, no in- 
tellectual machinery is untried to excite a 
spirit of emulation, which w T ill impose the 
heaviest labors upon the mind, while the 
body is all the while suffering the most 
marked neglect. 

Notwithstanding the long established 
maxim which teaches that sound minds 
can exist only in sound bodies, no parent 
asks what is done for health, no teacher 
thinks of bodily invigoration. In addition 
to all this, there are many of these 
schools in the middle and Southern States, 
in which girls contract and practise the 
habit of dipping, or the use of tobacco in 
its most injurious and revolting form — a 
habit which affords them assistance in 
their mental labors, but which inevitably 
destroys the tone of the nervous system, 
and invites attacks of the most painful 
diseases to which the female constitution 
is liable. The results of such vicious 
school-training are appalling. The vic- 
tims enter upon the career of adult life, 
without a single qualification for healthful 
an vigorous womanhood. Their children 
suffer with enfeebled constitutions, large, 
nervous development, and excessive bodi- 
ly and mental irritability. Generation 
succeeds generation with constantly in- 
creasing inferiority, hereditary diseases 
appear and make sad havoc with human 
life, and the sturdy couple who begin the 
married life in great bodily prowess, lose 



their name and lineage in the extinction 
of their great grand-children childless. 

It behooves parents to seek a remedy 
for such evils. It should be required thatj 
all schools of this kind devote an equal 
time to physical and to mental training. If 
they would have their daughters to enjoy 
the health, and exercise all the func- 
tions of womanhood, they must secure for 
them the advantages of exercise, fresh 
air, wholesome food, and enlivening and 
cheerful amusements. These are essen- 
tial, and it will be found that when one- 
half their working hours are devoted to 
these objects, they will learn more, and 
learn it better than under the vicious sys- 
tem which I have described. One hour is 
full long for any youth to be engaged in 
uninterrupted study, and longer, indeed, 
than any one can apply the mind closely. 
Relaxation should follow with bodily exer- 
cise, in the open air when the weather 
will permit, and at other times in rooms or 
halls separate from the school-room. Be- 
sides walking and running, various forms 
of celesthenic exercises may be used, 
among the best of which, are dancing and 
marching with music. Nothing tends to 
cultivate graceful movements so much as 
those exercises which keep time to music, 
while the muscles of locomotion are 
brought into more harmonious and health- 
ful action than bv any other plan of exer- 
cise. • A.' P. MERRILL, M. D. 



■• • o~f~ 



For the Planter, 

Tobacco 

The bane of Virginia husbandry — as 
will be shown under the three following 
heads, viz : First, because it requires more 
'labor than any other crop. Secondly, it 
is the most exhausting of all crops ; and, 
Thirdly, it is a demoralizer in the broadest 
sense of the term. 

Under the first head it will be seen at a 
glance, that it must require more labor 
than atn 7 other crop, because it is a full 
year and a half on hand. From seed- 
time till harvest the wheat crop, in this 
climate, requires eight mouths and a half — 
and but ten months, including six weeks, 
enough for every enterprising farmer to get 
his crop to market. From corn planting 
to the end of housing-time — eight months. 
Oats littie more than half this time — in 
short, all other crops except tobacco, are 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER 



717 



nade and gathered in within the year — but 
;g it takes 18 months from the sowing of 
obacco-seed to getting the crop to mar- 
:et, it is evident that for six months of 
he year the planter must suffer the em- 
larrassment of having upon his hands at 
he same time, the old crop and the new. 
Every practical man will see the trouble 
ncident to such a state of things as this, 
nd especially of a crop of the uncompro- 
mising demand for all the labour it re- 
hires, like the tobacco crop, and which, 
'y an invariable rule of every plantation, 
' so long as anything is required to be 
lone for the tobacco, everything else 
;ives way." 

The history of the agriculture of the 
porld may be challenged for a crop more 
laborately tended from beginning to end 
han the tobacco crop on a Virginia plan- 
ation — and thus it is, that while full jus- 
ice is done to it under the rule already 
nentioned, as fixed and unchangeable as 
he laws of the Medes and Persians, every 
hing else is starved. And when we have 
.dverted to some of the prominent de- 
nils of the culture of this all-absorbing- 
abor crop, it will be manifest it will be 
ustly liable to the charge of being the bane 
if all good husbandry; and here may be 
uper-added an insuperable barrier against 
he attainment of the higher degrees of 
ural economy in any community where it 
s a staple crop. 

To begin aright, we must commence 
vith sowing the seed. " Plant patch- 
jround," are household words with tobac- 
:o planters — and mean the richest virgin 
ioil; some rich hollow, or piece of branch- 
)ottom being selected, — the deeper in the 
brest the better, because less liable to the 
ly or tobacco flea — other things being 
equal, branch-land is preferred, as in dry 
;easons the branch-water may be used to 
rrigate the young plants — a work requir- 
ed more or less every season — and, under 
he tobacco rule, never omitted at any ex- 
pense of time or labor. Hickory, walnut, 
pawpaw and redbud are known to be the 
growths indicating the richest mould — and 
jpon some spot where these most abound, 
;he work of making plant-beds is usually 
;ommenced, the first week in the new 
pear — though many begin before the 
Christmas holidays — and thus increasing 
dy so much this all-absorbing crop. Such 
spots, in the depths of the forest, as are 



most densely covered with the heaviest 
growth are preferred, because they afford 
the large quantity of fuel required "to 
burn the plant-beds," a process deemed 
absolutely necessary to success.* The 
size of the plant-patch being determined, 
the timber is not only cut off from its sur- 
face, and mauled into suitable lengths for 
burning, but a large margin around is also 
cleared, experience having proved that 
the heaviest forest growth does not afford 
fuel enough to burn its own surface suffi- 
ciently for plants ; and besides, it is ne- 
cessary to remove the adjacent forest to 
let in the sun in order to encourage the 
early growth of the young plants. 

It may safely be assumed, that for every 
given number of superficial yards of land 
sown in tobacco seed, at least three times 
more is cleared of its timber, to answer 
the demands of burning, fencing and let- 
ting in the sun. This will afford some idea 
of the consumption of the finest forest 
timber annually for this item in tobacco- 
making districts. Although in former 
times this waste of the material for lum- 
ber, by reason of its abundance, was 
thought nothing of — now. in the altered 
circumstances of the country, leaves to- 
bacco fairly chargeable with ruinous con- 
sumption of one of the essential articles 
of rural economy, and by the nature of 
things growing annually of more impor- 
tance, the material of fuel and lumber. 

The wood being cut into proper lengths, 
and mauled into convenient sizes, with 
the brush of the limbs chopped and mixed 
with it, is laid in a ridge along one side of 
the proposed plant-patch, 4 feet wide, and 
about 2 or 2^ feet thick, w 7 ith the inter- 
mixture of brush — this being green wood, 
must be set on fire at first with light-wood 
or seasoned fuel, its whole length and 
breadth ; and when w T ell fired, adding from 
time to time fresh supplies of fuel, and 
keeping the fire up until the surface of 
the earth is sufficiently burnt, indicated by 
a reddish appearance or calcined state of 
the soil. The fire is then moved to the 
next space of four or five feet — this is 



* The consumption of large quantities of the 
finest fuel — for none other will answer, together 
with the hauling and careful management of the 
process, composes a large item against the all- 
devouring staple of labor, time and precious ma- 
terial. 



718 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER 



done by long poles with iron hooks at the 
ends ; so that two or three strong hands 
can take hold of the burning logs and roll 
them from the ridge of fire to the next place 
to be burnt; in the meantime the weaker 
hands have brought brush to intermix with 
the burning logs, and fresh supply of fuel 
being added to the mass, the fire is kept 
up until the process of thorough burning 
is again completed — and* thus by another 
and another removal and replenishing the 
fires, the whole surface of the plant-patch 
is burnt, and is ready to be hoed up for 
sowing the seed. 

This applies chiefly to the plantations of 
rich, virgin soils, when first brought into 
cultivation, but since the new impulse 
given to the tobacco culture by tire high 
prices and the use of guano — many expe- 
dients are resorted to to raise plants where 
the best soil has been long ago used up; 
but in any circumstances, the time and 
labor necessary for the plant-patches must 
be given — and although the recent use of 
guano has saved something in both — still 
this plant-patch work must be a large item 
in the tobacco culture. 

The ground being ready for seeding, is 
carefully broken up by hand-hoes about 
four inches deep, taking out every root- 
fibre, and mixing the covering of ashes 
left by the fires with the soil — raked, 
levelled and marked off into rows three 
feet wide, and one-half the proper quanti- 
ty of seed for the whole patch sown, and 
afterwards the other sown between lines 
across the first, in order to insure an equal 
distribution of the seed. Then after tread- 
ing over the whole surface, it is ready 
for covering. The straightest brush, free 
from leaves is preferred for this purpose, 
and is compactly laid from 18 inches to 2 
feet thick upon the ground. This straight 
and leafless brush is not often found near, 
and is sometimes a mile off, but be it far 
or near, it must be had, for no pains are ever 
spared in whatever concerns the tobacco. 
All this done, the whole is inclosed with 
an ample fence — which makes another 
draft upon the adjacent timber for the ne- 
cessary fence rails. 

Thus the choicest spots of virgin soil in 
the tobacco districts are cleared for 
making plants, and afterwards left as 
useless wastes, that but mark the expen- 
diture of sturdy labor, and vast consump- 
tion of the finest timber in this first stage 



of the process of producing this staple 
of Virginia agriculture. This business of 
plant-patch making takes up usually from 
three to four weeks of every winter. 
The rule is to provide a thousand super- 
ficial yards in plant-patches for every 100,- 
000 hills in the crop — but three or four 
times this proportion of plant-land is usu- 
ally prepared ia order to insure success — 
and after all, we often hear of scarcity 
and failure in plants. In a favorable season, 
there are always four times as many plants 
raised as are necessary to plant the crop — 
and of course three fourths of the labor 
and consumption of the timber in raising 
plants, being thus surplusage, is a dead 
loss to the planter, to say nothing of the 
diminished value of his estate by these 
depredations upon the forest lands, a de- 
gree of reckless wastefulness incident to 
no other crop. In an unfavorable season 
the loss is still greater — for when it is too 
dry the plants are watered, and when 
they grow slowly they are stimulated by 
top-dressing, and when the fly assails 
them they must be driven off or destroyed 
by promptly resorting to some of the in- 
numerable expedients invented by this 
class of cultivators of unequal vigilance in 
all the other departments of agriculture in 
this country or in any other. For, as has 
been already said, whenever anything can 
be conceived or imagined likel}" to affect 
the plant-patch unfavorably, or the tobac- 
co crop in any of its stages — it never 
escapes the tobacco-maker, and heaven 
and earth are moved forthwith on that 
plantation, until the needful or imaginary 
remedy is provided — cost what it may in 
labor — in teams, in vehicles, in manures 
both liquid and puWerized. If the plant- 
patch wants watering, it is irrigated, 
although the water, as is often the case, 
must be fetched in tubs or pails on the 
negroes' heads from a considerable dis- 
tance. Some of the remedies against the 
fly, a regular pest more or less, are sweep- 
ing the surface with soft brooms, covering 
the plants with various powders of sup- 
posed offensiveness to the insects — shaking 
a sheet with the lower side covered with 
some glutinous sizing to catch the hopping 
insects which stick to its surface, &c, &c, 
consuming an amount of labor and time 
hardly to be conceived but by one unac- 
quainted with the details of tobacco- 
making. In short, the tobacco is the idol 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



719 



jod of the plantation, before which every 
hing else is thrown down and trodden 
inderfoot: hence everything else getting 
mly the leavings of this insatiable con- 
sumer of labor, manure and time, is starved 
iterally, and the fatal consequences are 
?very where discoverable through the 
and — as will be further seen in the sequel. 
Having disposed of the plant-patches 
or a time, except the unceasing watch 
tgainst the fly, and to promote early 
growth by watering and manure, an inter- 
nal is presented for clearing new ground 
or the next crop, and when the weather 
s unfavorable for out-door work, for ear- 
ning on the stripping process of the last 
rear's crop. Here we are brought into 
ull collision with both crops on hand at 
he same time — the new crop in the plant- 
)atch and the old crop in the houses. 
3ut to proceed in order, we must account 
or the presence of this old crop now in 
he houses ; this, of course, the product of 
ast year's plants, after the elaborate culti- 
vation by which it has been raised, (the 
letails of which shall be given when we 
ro back to the plant-patches now on hand) 
las been cut when fully ripe, a state 
vhich requires* a shrewd judge to decide, 
martially cured on scaffolds, and finished 
>y firing in the houses. It is then struck 
lown from the tiers on which it is hung in 
he houses on sticks rived for the pur- 
>ose, during some damp and warm day in 
lutumn or early winter, in proper order 
or handling, or technically in "case" — 
aken from the sticks, packed down care- 
ully and straight, in close bulk, and 
covered thickly with wheat-straw, to ex- 
clude the air, and keep it "in case." 



For the Planter. 

Mr. Winston's Wheat Crop. 

Westwood, Oct. 22d, 1858. 

Ed. Southern Planter : 

Dear Sir. — I herewith send you a state- 
ment of my crop of wheat for the present 
fear. From it, interesting information 



* It is often threatened, and sometimes lost by 
3arly frost, which, from the earliest history of its 
julture, has been known to lead to the cutting of 
;he crop on the Sabbath when deemed necessa- 
•y to save it from a threatened frost before Mon- 
lay morning. 



may be derived respecting the utility of 
guano as a manure for wheat. The land 
on which the wheat was grown, was sur- 
veyed with great care by an accomplished 
surveyor. 

Number of acres in wheat, . . llf 
Wheat used for seed, . . . . 21 bus. 
Quantity of guano (Peruvian) used, 3000 11)3. 

" " per acre, 255 " 

Product of wheat per llf acres, 226 bus. 

" " per one acre, 19^ " 

Cost of Production. 

Preparation of land, sowing and reap- 
ing, @ $5 per acre, . . . $58 75 
Threshing and hauling 226 bushels, 12 00 
Cost of seed wheat @ $1 40 per bu., 29 40 
Cost of guano @ $60 per ton, 90 00 



Total cost, . 
Proceeds of 226 bus. 



. $190 15 
$140 per bu., 316 40 



Net proceeds, $125 25 

It is estimated that the same land, with- 
out guano, would have produced 10 bush- 
els per acre, or 114 bushels for the whole 
field. 

Cost of production same as before, ex- 
cept as to threshing, hauling, and the gu- 
ano. Thus : 

Cost of production, . . . . $ 94 15 
Proceeds of 114 bus. @ $1 40 per bu., 159 60 

Net proceeds, $65 45 

Now $125 25— $65 45=59 70,— the 
amount of profit due to the $90 outlay 
for the guano. This is an enormous profit, 
being about 65 per cent. 

Mode of Cultivation. 

Corn land deeply plowed with a two- 
horse plow ; the wheat and guano being 
sown broadcast by hand, and put in with 
a two-horse cultivator. 

I have taken more than usual pains to 
test, during a series of years, the value 
of guano as a manure tor wheat. I have 
used about two hundred pounds to the 
acre. I am satisfied, that on land that 
will bring 15 bushels of wheat to the acre, 
it does not ordinarily pay a profit ; especi- 
ally at its present price. The question is 
often asked, "Is guano an improver of 
the soil ?" To that question, two answers 
may be given. Under the clover -fallow 
system of farming, it is undoubtedly a 






720 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



rapid improver. It improves by promot- 
ing a larger and more luxuriant growth of 
clover. 

The introduction of guano, however, 
has given rise to a system of farming, 
which deserves the reprobation of every 
intelligent and dutiful son of Mother 
Earth. This is the practice of cultivating 
the same land in wheat, or oats, every 
year, guano being relied on as a fertilizer. 
The soil is thus soon exhausted of its 
proper proportion of vegetable mould, or 
humus, on which its productive capacity 
mainly depends ; and sterility must even- 
tually ensue. And, verily, the last state 
of such land is worse than the first. I 
can point to fields that have been cultivat- 
ed in this way. From once being rich, 
they do now show unmistakable signs of 
deterioration. They produced well for 
the first two years — then there was a grad- 
ual declension, and the crop of the pres- 
ent year was almost a total failure ! No 
soil can retain its fertility long, if it is 
subjected to a system of cultivation that 
exhausts it of its proper supply of either 
mineral or vegetable matter. The one will 
not take the place of the other. Viewed, 
then, in this aspect, I unhesitatingly give 
a most decided negative to the question 
under consideration. 

In conclusion, we would ask attention 
to the following question : Was not the 
failure in the wheat crop this year most 
signal on land deficient in vegetable mould, 
or that have been in wheat and guano 
several years in succession ? To this 
question my own observations would give 
a negative answer. The question is con- 
sidered important in its bearing on the 
use of guano, and it is hoped that it will 
elicit answers of such a kind as to justify 
the establishment of a general principle. 
Very respectfully, 

JOHN H. WINSTON. 



For the Planter. 

Sorghum Molasses. 

Sylvan Villa, Oct. 19th, 185S. 

To Ed. Southern Planter : 

Den?- Sir. — Havingexperimented to some 
extent this fall with the Chinese Sugar! 
Cane, I feel disposed to give some account i 
thereof to my brother farmers, through 
your excellent journal, hoping thereby , if | 



not to impart, at best to gain information, 
by drawing out others upon the subject. 

Last spring I planted some five or six 
acres of rich alluvial land in Sorghum, ex- 
pecting to feed it to stock: but this fall, 
believing I could contrive an apparatus 
for crushing it, more effectual than the' 
common apple-mill fixtures used, I had a 
machine built on the old cotton-gin prin- 
ciple, at a cost of some ten or twelve dol- 
lars, which acted so admirably, that I have 
gone on to make several hundred gallons of 
the richest, finest syrup I ever tasted. If 
you or any of your readers doubt it, come 
up and taste for yourselves, — and if Dame 
Nature has developed in you the gusto 
sense, and connected it with a good judg- 
ment, I fear not your verdict. 

I am convinced that, properly manag- 
ed, Sorghum may be made one of our 
most profitable erops. 

Corn, you know, in the hands of the 
aborigines, and our forefathers, was com- 
paratively valueless for bread, when the ' 
meal had to be grated on a tin, or pounded 
in a mortar. Wheat was reluctantly adopt- 
ed as a staple when it had to be trod out 
with horses, and wagoned several hundred 
miles to market. So I fear Sorghum has 
been decried when it has had to be crush- 
ed and re-crushed through an old apple-- 
mill, and then taken to a tobacco prize or 
cidar press to get its stores of sweet 
chings ready for the kettle, and indeed I 
am inclined to believe that it has been too 
often taken before its time, while yet in 
an immature state, — the result of which 
has been the production of an imperfect, 
ill-flavoured syrup. Nearly all in this re- 
gion had finished making up iheir cane be- 
fore I commenced ; and though I have 
been making about three weeks, I find the 
ripest cane produces the richest, clearest 
and best flavoured syrup. It, however, 
does no yield quite as much. 

I find on an average about six gallons 
of the juice will make one of syrup, of 
proper keeping consistence. 

After the cane is cut and stripped of 
its fodder, two hands can crush and boil 
down about twenty-five or thirty gallons 
of molasses per day. A sixty gallon ket- 
tle, fixed in a brick furnace, will boil 
down in about twelve or fourteen hours, 
and yield about ten gallons ; and it is near- 
ly as easy to attend to three or four ket- 
tles as to one, I prefer greatly cast ket- 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



r 21 



ties to copper, as they boil after becoming 
hot much more steadily, and are not half 
so apt to scorch. 

Sorghum requires about the same 
amount of tillage as corn, and one hand 
could easily till ten acres in addition 
to ordinary fanning crops. On good land, 
I believe the cane will yield about one 
hundred gallons of syrup, — which, at 50 
cts. per gallon, would amount to $500 
Deduct $100 for expenses, and allowing 
the seed and fodder to pay for tillage, we 
have left $400 nett proceeds for ten acres, 
or $40 per acre. 

Tobacco, at 4500 hills per acre, and 
seven plants to the pound at six dollars 
per hundred, would yield $38 58, and re- 
quire thiee or four times the labour of the 
cane, and give no pay above that for its 
tillage. So if we were to reduce the cane 
to fifty gallons per acre, it would still 
" pay better" than tobacco. There may 
be none of the Sorghum lost, for even the 
stalk, after it is pressed, if dried and stored 
away, [ have no doubt would make a fine 
winter feed for horses and milch cows, by 
cutting and soaking them, and rolling 
them in meal or chop. Much saccharine 
matter is left in them, even after the most 
effectual pressure, which, I doubt not, 
would be fine for horses, cattle or hogs. 
I run them under a pressure of about 
three or four thousand pounds, and yet 
my hogs thrive rapidly on them. 

I have no doubt that the finest quality 
of vinegar may be made from the juice, 
and if so, one acre that would make 100 
gallons of molasses, would make from 800 
to 900 gallons of vinegar equal to the best 
apple vinegar ; — say 800 gallons, at 12-| 
cents an acre, would give $100. This, 
however, is conjecture, for I know not the 
loss in making vinegar. But reduce this 
one half, and the ten acres (a hand's crop) 
would yield $500 ; and the expense of 
making the vinegar would not be half 
that ot molasses. 

I have no doubt it might be distilled 
into spirits profitably ; but that I shall 
never tr} r . 

Pardon prolixity, &c. 

J. F. E. 



Good Fritters. — To a pint of good butter 
rnilk, add a little salt and a tea-spoonful of 
soda ; stir in flour enough to make a thick bat- 
ter. Fry in hot lard. 
46 



For the Southern Planter. 

How to Keep Sweet Potatoes. 

Mr. Editor: 

Having noticed a call for information about 
the "safe keeping of sweet potatoes," not in 
yours bui in other agricultural papers, I com- 
ply at once with the promise made some weeks 
ago, and which you have perhaps forgotten. 

From repeated observations, made some fif- 
teen years since, it appeared that weight and 
moisture were the only causes of rot among 
root crops, provided they are sound when 
stored, and the frost excluded. 

Roots put away in rainy, damp, or foggy 
weather, have a poor chance of wintering well ; 
if bulked under such unfavorable conditions, 
they should be afterwards dried by the sun and 
wind*, or by the fire. 

No damp situation will answer for the safe 
keeping of root crops. The digging should be 
effected, if possible, in dry weather: if you 
must dig them in a moist condition, be sure 
and dry them before finally storing them away. 
All sources of moisture being guarded against, 
half the battle is gained, but in the next place 
excessive weight must be avoided. 

The best depth for a heap of sVeet potatoes 
is about 18 to 20 inches, and the liability to rot 
will increase in direct proportion to the increase 
of depth over that limit. So after laying that 
depth of roots, have boards laid over, sup- 
ported strongly at each end, not touching the 
mass below, but allowing two or three inches 
for ventilation ; this process of shelving, or floor- 
ing, at every 22 or 23 inches, may be continued 
to the joists. 

In very cold localities additional precau- 
tions become necessary; the frost is there the 
main enemy, and sawdust, dry chaff', pine 
leaves, or other thoroughly dry material must 
be laid under and over the roots to the depth of 
five or six inches, which will require that the 
shelves, or floors, be placed 10 or 12 inches 
farther apart. 

I have used a structure resembling an old- 
fashioned cup-board, made of refuse plank, 
with shelves about 20 inches apart, and found 
it to answer well, except that a good lock and 
key would have been a valuable improvement. 

In constructing a potatoe barn, I find it well 
to pave w T ith brick, on account of rats ; and to 
exclude cold, the walls are stuffed with dry 
chaff, slats being nailed on the inside of the 
studs, or posts, for that purpose; between the 
interstices of the slats, or narrow boards, and 
at intervals of about 20 inches, the shelves, as 
above described, find support. 

Other modes of storing roots may answer as 
well, with regard to frost, but few plans will 
afford equal security against thieves as the 
above, which have never failed in fifteen years 
trial. Respectfully, 

J. LUCIUS DAVIS. 

N. B. — The above hints will be found useful 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



and to some extent applicable to the winter 
storage of every variety of root crop, as well 
as apples or other fruit. 

Decay begins at the bottom of the mass, where 
weight and moisture are greatest. J. L. D. 

We regret that Col. D.'s letter was received 
too late for insertion in our November number; 
but thinking it probable that other engage- 
ments had caused him to forget to furnish us 
with an account of his plan, we wrote a short 
and imperfect sketch of it for that number, 
which we will now retract, and give our readers 
the Col.'s own directions instead of our hasty 
note. 

This method of storing sweet potatoes has 
been thoroughly tested, and is no mere item of 
"book farming" — but may be relied on. — 
Editor. 

The Wonderful Nature of the Human 
Mind, Exhibited in the Power of Mind 
over Matter. 

No stress will here be laid upon the mysteri- 
ous connection between the mind and the body, 
by which the former controuls the voluntary 
movements of the latter, because this, wonder 
ful as it is, does not distinguish man from 
the brutes. 1 refer to that power, by which 
man subjects the whole material world, ani- 
mate and inanimate, organized and unorgan- 
ized, to his personal use and convenience. 
There is not a substance in all the earth's con- 
stituents or productions, which he does not 
somehow employ for himself; not an animal 
or an insect which he does not convert in 
some way into a minister to his real or im- 
aginary good ; not a principle or law of Nature, 
which he does not make subservient to some 
personal purpose, as soon as it is discovered. 

What are the varied and nameless comforts 
that belong to civilized societ} 7 , as distinguished 
from savage, but so many different instances 
of the mind of man, turning the powers and 
susceptibilities of matter to accommodate his 
own wishes? Some of these powers are of 
terrific energy. But, the mind of man fear- 
lessly puts them in bonds to do him service; 
and with an obedience, as amazing for its sub- 
missiveness as for its efficiency, they act at hi? 
bidding. Fire and wind, the mighty ocean, 
steam and the lightning itself, wait, as it were, 
upon the will of man. The astonishing facili- 
ties for intercourse between distant places 
which now exist, and are daily becoming more 
numerous, and the extreme case and the pro- 
digious rapidity with which all the utensils and 
fabrics and multitudinous articles of utility, 
pleasure and luxury are now furnished to the 
world, are merely the results of the power oi 
mind over matter. It is by this controul ovei 
the most wonderful energies and capabilities 



of Nature, that man is rendered emphatically, 
" lord of this lower creation." 
Thus— 

* * "Man is one world, and hath 
Another to attend him;" 

And here, one cannot help thinking of the 
fylly and atheism of that philosophy of ancient 
times, which represented matter as the fatal 
enemy of man; which loved to discourse of 
body and spirit as antagonist principles. If 
they have indeed been foes from eternity as 
such phylosophy imagined, it is now obvious 
enough, that the spirit has gained the mastery, 
and is likely to hold it, and the more the gross 
things of sense shall resist the supremacy, the 
more strengh for command will the 'mind 
gather from the very resistance; since all the 
resistance that matter can make is, by disclos- 
ing its own properties and laws, and every new 
property or law thus disclosed, is instantly con- 
verted by the mind into a new servant and 
minister to itself. But it is a more ennobling 
view as it is the only rational view, which 
christian philosophy — the only true philosophy 
—now gives us of the case. This pointsout to us 
a most striking manifestation of the power, wis- 
dom and goodness of God the Creator, in so ac- 
commodating to each other the nature of mind 
and the nature of matter. The adaptation is truly 
wonderful, and shows demonstratively, that 
"God, in constructing the vast mechanism of 
Nature, overlooked not the humblest of its 
parts, but incorporated the good of our species 
with the wider generalities and laws of a uni- 
versal system." The properties and laws of 
matter are all fitted to subserve the purposes of 
the intelligent mind. Every new triumph over 
external Nature, every new instance of a 
mastery acquired by man over the elements 
which surround him, is a new development of 
this interesting truth; showing more fully how 
mind and matter have been adapted to each 
other; " the first endowed by the Creator with 
those powers which qualify it to command; the 
second no less evidently endowed with those 
corresponding susceptibilities which cause it 
to obey." 

Now here is the argument: the material 
world is indeed wonderfully made, and appears 
especially so in its adapted subserviency to 
mind; but the mind appears thereby still more 
wonderfully made, as it is by its own nature 
fitted for such command. 

And we must not overlook a peculiar con- 
sideration, that gives great force to the argu- 
ment, viz: the fact, that the material world is 
thus made to contribute to the interests of 
man, only by his applying to matter the results 
of long processes of abstruse calculation, the 
principles of the most abstract sciences, the 
pure inventions of the mind itself. As for ex- 
ample, the position of the north star, the incli- 
nation of the earth's axis, and the polarity of 
the magnetic needle, are material facts seizei 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER 



721 



by the mind of man and raa<je subservient to 
the business of navigation; and who can de- 
scribe the blessings which are secured to the 
human race, by this one instance of adapta- 
tion ? And yet, of what service would it be with- 
out the science of mathematics ? The expansive 
force of steam is noweontributingimmeasurably 
to the comfort of man; and yet, of what use 
could it be without the intricate science of 
mechanics? Thus it is by the help of its own 
pure abstractions, that the mind holds its sway 
over the powers of Nature, and makes all the 
bodies in space, and space itself, to minister to 
his wishes. — Memoir of Fiske. 





A Table, 






To show at a glance the numba 


of hills 0) 


• plants 


i contained in a 


n acre of land 


at any given dis- 


tance from each other, from * 


10 feet by 


10, to 1 


foot by 1, omitting fractions. 






feet. feet. 


per acre. 


feet. 


feet. 


pr acre 


40 by 40 


27 


13 


by 13 


257 


39 . . 39 


28 


— 


;. io 


335 


38 . . 38 


30 


— 


5 


670 


37 .. 37 


31 


12 


.. 12 


302 


36 . . 36 


33 


— 


. . 10 


363 


35 . . 35 


35 


— 


5 


720 


34 . . 34 


37 


11 


. . 11 


360 


33 . . 33 


40 


— 


. . 10 


396 


32 . . 32 


42 


— 


.. 5 


792 


31 . . 31 


45 


10 


. . 10 


435 


30 . . 30 


48 


— 


.. 9 


484 


29 . . 29 


51 


— 


. . 8 


544 


28 . . 28 


55 


— 


7 


622 


27 . . 27 


59 


— 


.. 6 


726 


26 . . 26 


64 


— 


. . 5 


871 


25 . . 25 


69 


— 


. . 4 


1089 


24 . . 24 


75 


— 


. . 3 


1452 


23 . . 23 


82 


- 


o 


2178 


22 . . 22 


90 


— 


. . 1 


4356 


21 . . 21 


98 


9 


. . 9 


537 


20 . . 20 


108 


— 


g 


605 


— . . 15 


145 


— 


. . 7 


691 


— . . 10 


217 


— 


. . 6 


806 


— . . 5 


435 


— 


5 


968 


19 . . 19 


120 


— 


. . 4 


1210 


— . . 15 


152 


— 


. . 3 


1613 


— . . 10 


229 


— 


o 


2420 


— . . 5 


458 


— 


. . 1 


4840 


18 . . 18 


134 


S 


. . 8 


6S0 


— . . 15 


161 


— 


. . 7 


777 


— . . 10 


242 


— 


. . 6 


905 


— .. 5 


484 


— 


. . 5 


1089 


17 .. 17 


150 


— 


. . 4 


1361 


— . . 15 


170 


— 


. . 3 


1815 


— . . 10 


256 


— 


2 


2722 


— . . 5 


512 


— 


. . 1 


5445 


16 . . 16 


170 


7 


. . 7 


888 


— . . 15 


175 


— 


.. 6 6 


957 


— .. 10 


272 


— 


. . 6 


1037 


— . . 5 


544 


— 


5 6 


1131 


15 . . 15 


193 


— 


. . 5 


1241 


— .. 10 


2 90 


— 


.. 4 6 


1382 


— .-,. 5 


5 SO 


— 


.. 4 


1555 


14 .'. 14 


222 


— 


.. 3 6 


1777 


— .. 10 


311 


— 


.. 3 


2074 


— .. 5 


622 


— 


. . 2 6 


2489 , 



7 by 2 



2 





1 


6 


1 


7 


6 





5 


6 


5 





4 


6 


4 








6 








2 


6 


2 





1 


6 


1 





5 


6 


5 





4 


6 


4 





3 


6 


3 





2 


6 


2 





1 


6 


1 





5 





4 


6 


4 





Q 


6 


2 





2 


6 


2 





1 


6 


1 





4 


6 


4 





3 


6 


3 





o 


6 


2 





1 


6 


1 





4 





3 


9 


3 


6 


3 


3 


3 





2 


9 


2 


6 


2 


3 


2 





1 


9 


1 


6 


1 


Q 


1 





3 


9 


3 


6 


3 


3 


3 





2 


9 


2 


6 


2 


3 


2 





1 


9 


1 


6 


1 


3 


1 






per acre 


feet. 


3111 


3 6 1 


4148 




6222 




1210 




1320 




1452 




1613 




1815 




2074 




2420 




2904 




3630 


3 3 . 


4840 




7260 




1417 




1584 




1760 




1980 




2272 




2640 




3168 




3960 


3 . 


5280 




7920 




1742 




1936 




2178 




2489 




2904 




3484 




4356 


2 9 . 


5808 




8712 




2151 




2420 




2765 




3226 




3872 




4840 


2 6 . 


6453 




9680 




2722 




2904 




311 jl 




3350 




3630 


2 3 . 


3960 




4356 




4840 




. 5445 




6222 




'7260 


2 . 


8712 




10890 




3097 




3318 j 




3574 


1 9 . 


3872 j 




4224 ! 




4646 




5162 


1 6 . 


5808 




6637 I 




7744 


1 3 . 


9272 




11616 


1 . 



feet. 


pr acre 


3 6 


3555 


3 3 


3829 


3 


4148 


2 9 


4525 


2 6 


4978 


2 3 


5531 


2 


6222 


1 ( .» 


7111 


1 6 


8297 


1 3 


9956 


1 


12445 


3 3 


4124 


3 


4818 


2 9 


4873 


2 6 


5361 


2 3 


5956 


2 


6701 


1 9 


7658 


1 6 


8935 


1 3 


10722 


1 


13403 


3 


4840 


2 9 


5289 


2 6 


5808 


2 3 


6453 


2 


7260 


1 9 


8297 


1 6 


96S0 


1 3 


11616 


1 


14520 


2 9 


5760 


2 6 


6336 


2 3 


7040 


2 


7920 


1 9 


9051 


1 6 


10560 


1 3 


12672 


1 


15840 


2 6 


6969 


2 3 


7740 


2 


8712 


1 9 


9956 


1 6 


11616 


1 3 


13939 


1 


17424 


2 3 


8604 


2 


9680 


1 9 


11062 


1 6 


129.06 


1 3 


15488 


1 


19360 


2 


10890' 


1 9 


12445 


1 6 


14520 


1 3 


17424 


1 


21780 


1 9 


14223 


1 6 


16594 


1 3 


19913 


1 




1 6 


19360 


1 3 


23232 


1 


290 tO 


1 3 


278 78 


1 


U8 18 


1 


43530 



724 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER, 



From Hunt's Merchants' Magazine. 

TEA. 

Character of the Plant — How Cultivated — 
Times of Gathering — Varieties of Tea — 
Progresses of Preparation — Scenting — Char- 
acter of the Chief Varieties — Varieties of 
Green and Black — Uses and Constitutional 
Effects — National Use — Universal Influence 
of Tea — Chemical Constituents — Physiologi- 
cal Effects — Nutritive Properties — Theine — 
Climatic Adaptation — Suited to the United 
States — Counterfeits and Adulterations — 
Poisons, and how to De:ect Them. 

Tea consists of the dried leaves of the 
Then Sinensis, an evergreen shrub, belong- 
ing to the family of Camellias, which are 
native to China, Japan, Cochin China, and 
the southeastern part of Asia. It is a har- 
dy plant, and, in the uncultivated state, 
grows to the height of fifteen or twenty 
feet, but, as cultivated in the tea-fields, 
rarely ever grows higher than six or eight, 
and generally not more than four or five 
feet. 

The leaves are alternate, eliptical, point- 
ed, toothed and firm, smooth, shiney, and 
deep green ; from one-and-a-half to four 
inches long, and from half an inch to an 
inch-and-a-half wide. The flowers are 
white and large, borne on short peduncles, 
single or united in small clusters at the 
axils of the superior leaves. 

It is generally propagated from seed, and 
arrives at maturity in from two to three 
years, when it is capable of yielding two 
or three crops of leaves, and sometimes 
four, annually. The^rst gathering takes 
place in early spring, the second about the 
1st of May, the third in June, and a fourth 
in August. The first gathering produces 
the finest variety of tea. It chiefly con- 
sists of the young leaf-buds and small 
leaves, from which the best Pekoe and Ihe 
finest varieties of black are made. 

The later gatherings consists of the lar- 
ger and older leaves, which, by long ex- 
posure on the plants, have lost part of their 
flavor, and become less valuable. Hence, 
it is found that the finest teas usually con- 
sist of the smallest leaves. At the first 
gathering the leaves are slender, smooth 
and even-edged, twisted, and downy. Se- 
cond gathering takes place just as the 
leaves begin to have veins, and their edges 
delicately notched. At the third gather- 
ing the veination is fully developed, the 
edges coarsely notched and wavy. 



Until late years botanists designated 
several species of the tea plant, but now 
it is generally conceded that all the varie- 
ties of teas are obtained from one and the 
same plant, the differences in the tea from 
which depending wholly upon the soil, cli- 
mate, weather, age of the leaves $ and mode 
of preparation. 

Varieties. — Black teas are mostly pro- 
duced from plants growing on the slopes 
of hills and mountain sides, a range of 
which, called Bohea mountains, being the 
origin of the variety of tea known as such. 
On the other hand, green teas are gene- 
rally produced from plants grown on cul- 
tivated and manured plains. Other quali- 
ties depend upon the processes of prepa- 
ration, in drying, rolling, etc. 

Bohea is usually prepared from the full- 
grown leaves of the third gathering, and 
is, therefore, the commonest and cheapest 
variety. Souchong, Congou, Padre-Sou- 
chong, Caper-Souchong and Pekoe — which 
consists of the first gathering, and hence 
called "flowery" — are gathered early and 
of finest quality. 

The principle varieties of green teas are 
Young Hyson, Hyson, Hyson-skin, Twan- 
kay, Imperial and Gunpowder. This last, 
in green tea, corresponds to Pekoe, in 
black. Imperial, Hyson, and Young Hy- 
son are of the second and third gatherings. 
Hyson-skin chiefly consists of the refuse 
of other varieties, or is produced by a 
fourth gathering. 

Processes of Preparation. — Tea leaves 
in their green state contain an acrid prin- 
ciple, which may be dispersed by heat. — 
This is accomplished by the process of 
roasting, and for this purpose a large iron 
dish, called a kuo, is used. The leaves 
are first dipped into hot water, and after 
drainage they are spread upon the kuo, 
which is at first only raised to a moderate 
degree of heat, and only has the effect of 
rendering the leaves soft and pliable. They 
are then removed and first submitted to 
the first rolling. For the very finest qual- 
ty, each leaf is rolled separate!}', but more 
commonly the leaves are spread upon 
large tables covered with straw mats, and 
rolled by rubbing them with the hands, or 
between the palms. 

This operation is continued until the 
leaves become cold, when they are again 
submitted to the kuo, and the process re- 
peated. The best kinds are heated on the 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER 



725 



kuo, and rolled three or four times before 
they are deemed of maximum quality. For 
green teas, this completes the prepration of 
the finest varieties. Inferior qualities are 
subsequently flavored. 

Black teas require an additional process, 
viz : to be heated in sieves over a hot 
charcoal fire. This has the effect of more 
perfectly driving off the acrid principle, and 



rendering: the leaves drier and 



brittle 



As thus prepared, the finest early 
gathering are, when last from the kuo 
and sieves, before getting cold, packed 
for exportation. But the quantity of this 
is Very small. 

Scenting. — By far the larger quantity 
of tea known in commerce has been aro- 
matized or scented. A knowledge of this 
process, and the materials used in it, was, 
until very recently, kept secret from for- 
eign nations. But it is now generally known 
that the Chinese employ for* this purpose 
certain rare vegetable productions, which 
have the effect of imparting desirable 
flavours to tea, without in any way affect- 
ing its natural properties. And some of 
the teas thus treated are known to be 
among the most eagerly sought after. 

The only substances known to foreign- 
ers, with which the Chinese flavour tea, 
are the flowers of the following plants — 
a species of chloranthus, call by the Chi- 
nese Chu-Lan ; the Gardenia jlorida, or 
Pac She em ; the Olea fragrans, or Ruy-fa; 
and Jasmimum Sambac, or Mos-Sy-Hoa. 
As already remarked, these plants are all 
scarce, even in China, where they are 
native ; their use, therefore, is in every 
way calculated to enhance the value of 
the tea in which they are used, notwith- 
standing the Chinese themselves, as well 
as all other persons who have had the op- 
portunities of judging, agree in the opin- 
ion that only common teas require scent- 
ing, and that, however exquisitely this 
process may be accomplished, the very 
ultimatum of success is only, after all, a 
faint imitation of the finest Souchong, the 
natural flavour of which being far more 
delicious than it is possible to communi- 
cate to an inferior variety. 

When tea is about to be scented, it 
is taken hot from the roasters and 
put into a chest in a layer of two or three 
inches deep ; upon this a handful of 
freshly gathered Chu-Lan flowers are 
strewn. Then another layer of tea, and 



so on until the chest is full. It is 
then tightly closed and so kept for 
twenty-four hours, on the expiration of 
which time the chest is opened, and the 
tea and flowers thoroughly mixed and sub- 
mitted 10 the drying process in seives, 
over a charcoal fire, until the flowers be- 
come crisp, when the whole is removed 
and the flowers sifted out. If the tea is 
found to be sufficiently flavoured the pro- 
cess is now closed ; if not, the operation 
is again repeated. 

The tea thus prepared is mixed with 
others, in the proportion of about one part 
of the scented to twenty of the plain, 
when the mixture is moderately treated in 
the kuo, and immediately afterwards while 
w^arm packed for use or exportation, and 
is known as Cowslip Hyson. 

Black teas are also scented with Chu- 
Lan flowers, but in a different and more 
expensive manner, as it takes a larger 
quantity of the flowers. The flowers are 
first carefully roasted, so as not to burn 
them, and then reduced to a fine powder. 
This is sprinkled over the tea during the 
process of the last roastings, previous to 
packing. Some of this constitutes choice 
varieties of Souchong or Caper teas, and 
the Tet Siong. The Pac Sheem flowers 
are used for senting a still more exquis- 
itely fine Souchong, which is chiefly used 
for diplomatic presents, and rarely found 
in commerce. Ruy-fa and Mos-Sy-Hoa 
are also exclusively used for scenting 
black teas, of Souchong flavouis. 

Character of the Chief Varieties. — 
Black Teas. — Pekoe. — This is the finest 
and has most aroma. The leaves are slen- 
der, of a dark silvery colour, covered with a 
light silky dust ; ends speckled wiih gray, 
black and white spots. Odour agreeably 
aromatic ; infusion of golden-yellow col- 
our ; taste somewhat similar to the flavour 
of fresh and hazel-nuts. 

Congou. — Leaves thin and short, of a 
grayish-black colour; infusion clear, strong 
and agreeable. 

Pouchong. — Leaves large, long, and 
tightly rolled, mixed with a large quantity 
of leaf-stocks; odour sweet; infusion green. 

Souchong. — Leaves larger than Congou, 
but not so large and long as Pouchong, 
thin and rather broken ; infusion clear, 
yellowish, and sweet. It is the strongest 
of black teas. 

Bohea. — Leaves of all size, with frag- 



726 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



merits and leaf-stocks ; of a grayish-green 
colour, rolled longitudinally and crosswise ; 
very dry and easily broken ; infusion 
redish, of a somewhat smoky taste. If 
let stand, deposits a blackish sediment. 

Green Teas. — Hyson. — Leaves long, 
straight., spirally twisted, and firmly roll- 
ed, but dry and easily broken ; odour 
sweetly aromatic ; infusion of clear, cit- 
ron-yellow colour. It is the most es- 
teemed of all green teas. 

Gunpowder. — This is distinguished from 
Hyson by being in smaller particles, still 
more tightly rolled, but less easily broken ; 
of dark green colour; infusion clear, gol- 
den green. 

Impereal. — Much like Gunpowder, only 
in larger grains, and very hard ; of silver- 
green colour, and some of its grains re- 
semble pearls. 

Hyson Shoulong. — Resembles Hyson, 
but more fragrant. 

Hyson-junior, or Yu-tseen. — Is compos- 
ed of some small delicate leaves, nicely 
rolled, and very crisp; of yellowish-green 
colour; odour agreeable, resembling violets. 

Twankay. — Large yellowish leaves, bad- 
ly rolled, and strong odour ; infusion lim- 
pid, bright yellow ; sweet, rough taste. 

Hyson Skin. — Leaves yellowish brown, 
irregularly rolled; odour nearly null, and 
of ferruginous taste ; infusion bright yel- 
low, and turbid. ItistheBohea of green teas. 

Uses and Constitutional Effects. — Tea 
was first known in Europe by being taken 
there from India by the Dutch in 1610. 
It was introduced into England by Lords 
Ossory and Arlington, from Holland, in 
1666; and being much admired by the 
nobility, it was imported from thence, 
and generally sold for about 60 shillings 
per pound, and until the trade was taken 
up by the East India Company. Green 
tea was first used in England in 1715. 
Our colonial ancestors brought their tastes 
with them, and finding the conditions of 
the American climate such as to promote 
the use of a beverage which imparted 
hygienial benefits, tea appeared to them 
as one of the first necessities of comfort- 
able digestion, which the lordly tea-lovers 
of England thought colonials had no right 
to enjoy ; therefore they were taxed for 
venturing to indulge in the Celestial 
drink ! Whereupon, the issue is well 
known. 

The great Atlantic, which was first set 



simmering on the shores of Boston and 
New York, was converted into a foaming 
and fuming tea-kettle, that at last boiled 
over, and so dreadfully scalded the impost- 
ers, as to lequire the use of the most potent 
revulsive known in the healing art of na- 
tional discords. The burn has never per- 
fectly healed, and it is doubtful whether 
it ever will ; for, admitting the well-known 
properties of tea to promote nervous ex- 
citement, it is a homeopathical fact that 
from the year 1773, that most potent and 
powerful drug, theine, has been diffused 
through the oceans and seas of the 
world, and by the flowing and ebbing of 
tides and rivers, and by the infinitesi- 
mal division of the particles of watery 
vapour which have been distilled and re- 
distilled in the mists and clouds of the 
universe, all nature is now under the in- 
fluence of tea; which, my dear reader, 
accounts for' the go-a-headative propen- 
sities of Young America. 

Tea chemically consists of mucilage, 
extractive, resin, gallic and tanic acids, 
and an alkaloid called theine. It has, 
from the time it was first made known to 
civilized nations, been considered by some 
a powerful poison, which, though irregu- 
lar, slow, and uncertain, is nevertheless 
likely to break out — as above demon- 
strated. The poisonous property is attrib- 
uted to the alkaloid theine, which, in the 
strongest tea reduced to the nicest chemi- 
cal analysis, is found to exist in the pro- 
portion of forty-six-one-hundredths of a 
part in a hundred. It is said to possess 
exhilarant properties. Physiologically, 
tea, coffee, and tobacco possess the re- 
markable quality of retarding the waste 
of the system, and so diminish the de- 
mand for food, and make a limited amount 
go further. To the majority of people, 
the habitual use of tea is of incontestible 
advantage. It is decidedly favorable to 
digestion for healthy persons, and fre- 
quently remediable to dyspeptics. It de- 
velops a slight degree of excitation, and 
if taken in large quantity tells particularly 
on the nervous system ; hence, it is ap- 
parent that persons of excitable tempera- 
ment, at least, do not need tea, and may 
be injured b}' it. To the oppositely con- 
stituted, however, it makes the blood cir- 
culate more smoothly, promotes digestion 
and cutaneous exhalation, and stimulates 
the intellectual faculties, while, as already 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER 



727 



tity of food smaller which Liebig and 
other distinguished chemists attribute to its 
possessing positively nutritious properties. 

The common way of taking tea every- 
body is familiar with ; but in Japan, among 
the wealthy, a more ancient mode is fol- 
lowed. The leaves being first ground to 
powder, it is infused in hot water for 
awhile, and afterwards whipped with a 
split bamboo till it creams, when they 
drink both the infusion and powder, as 
coffee is used in many parts of Asia ; 
when it is said " to temper the spirits, 
harmonize the mind, dispel lassitude, and 
relieve fatigue ; it awakens thought, and 
prevents drowsiness ; lightens or refreshes 
the bod}^ and clears the perceptive fac- 
ulties." 

Chemists look for the properties of tea 
according to its elementary constitution ; 
but the fact is, that however active the in- 
gredients might be under other circum- 
stances, they are so nicely balanced in 
tea that, when taken in their combination, 
the effects of no one of its constituents 
are particularly pre-eminent. Tea can 
never be employed for its tanin, nor inju- 
rious on account of the amount it con- 
tains. The same may be said of theine 
in a still lighter degree. Theine is a fee- 
ble base, precipitated by tanin alone from 
its solutions, and does not, in reality, con- 
centrate any of the active qualities of tea, 
it being only an isolation. 

The prevalent discrepancies regarding 
the effects of tea on the constitution are 
wholly due to the different temperaments 
of individuals, whenever such tempera- 
ments are specially marked; and the 
same may be said, too, as regards the dif- 
ferences between black and green. When 
employed in moderation, the particular 
variety may safely depend upon the taste 
and experience of the consumer. 

Climatic Adaptation. — The tea plant 
flourishes over a wide range of latitude 
and degree of elevation. It grows luxu- 
riantly in the climate of Pekin, in the lati- 
tude of 40°, and equally well in the vi- 
cinity of Canton, on the verge of the 
tropics. The best tea, however, is pro- 
duced in a mild, temperate climate, the 
country about Nankin producing better 
tea than either Pekin or Canton. But in 
any case, the tea plant is found to require 
a rich sandy loam, in order to bring it to 
perfection. Japan • appears to be even 



more favorable to the growth of tea than 
China. In Japan it is planted around the 
borders of fields, without much regard to 
situation or soil, while in China chiefly 
middle grounds have to be selected, and 
much order observed in distance and cul- 
tivation — the plants standing about four 
feet apart. 

By experiments which have been made 
of late years in South Carolina, tending 
to prove the perfect climatic adaptation of 
parts of that State to the growth of tea, 
and considering that the time cannot be 
long before the Chinese will form a much 
more considerable proportion of our im- 
migrants than heretofore, there' is just 
reason to believe that ere long tea will be- 
come an important agricultural product of 
the United States. In respect to latitude, 
elevation above the level of the sea, and 
other circumstances which modify the cli- 
mate, our Southern States singularly cor- 
respond to those regions of China and Ja- 
pan which are known to produce the best 
tea. 

Counterfeits and Adulterations. — It is 
proper in this connection to state, that in 
order for tea to retain well its properties, 
it should be kept as free as possible from 
all moisture. Besides which, sea or ship 
air exercise a particular influence on the 
quality of tea, which ultimately destroys 
its aroma. The writer has frequently ob- 
served the result of this on the very best 
qualities of tea that could be obtained ; 
no matter how tightly sealed, if kept at 
sea for a twelve month, it is scarcely bet- 
ter than so much of the dried debris of 
any other plant. It is well known that 
the shorter the voyage from China, other 
things being equal, the better the quality 
of tea. 

The frauds in tea seem to have kept 
pace with the extent of its consumption. 
These chiefly consist in the employment 
of artificial coloring matter, and in the 
substitution of foreign leaves. 

Green tea is more frequently adultera- 
ted than black, and of the latter, Congou 
and Souchong are the most pure ; while 
those qualities having the strongest aroma, 
such as Pekoe, Caper, Chu Lau, and black 
j Gunpowder, are more likely to be adulte- 
rated than those apparently weaker. The 
I leaves of the plum, ash, elder, hawthorn, 
willow, poplar, horse- chesnut, laurel, sweet 
I brier, elm, and divers other leaves colored 



728 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



with the salts of copper for green teas, and 
with logwood for black, have frequently 
been found by those who have taken the 
pains to examine the various qualities of 
tea always in market. Millions of pounds 
of these and similar leaves are dried an- 
nually by the Chinese, by whom they are 
mixed with, and sold as tea. These mix- 
tures, and the several varieties of tea, con- 
stitute many sub-sorts, which are colored, 
dusted, and packed in "original" boxes 
and papers, to suit the calibar of every 
purchaser. 

Catechu, kino, gum, starch, sulphate of 
iron or copperas, rose-pink, logwood, black- 
lead, soap-stone, indigo, and turmeric, have 
all been isolated from black tea of " exqui- 
site" appearance and " laudable" quality. 
In addition to these, green tea is treated 
with Prussian blue, mineral green, verdi- 
gris, arsenite of copper, Dutch-pink, chro- 
mate of potash, bichromate of potash, chrome 
yellow, chalk, gypsum, carbonate of magne- 
sia, and many other substances which can- 
not be separated. 

For the detection of these frauds it is 
absolutely necessary that the person ex- 
amining be familiar with the appearances 
and structure of the tea-leaf, and to have 
the aid of the microscope. 

The properties of pure tea are known to 
vary, yet there are certain properties in 
common with which one may become so 
familiar as to be able to mark a departure 
from them. The infusion of tea varies in 
color between lightyellow and dark brown. 
Concentrated and warm, it is limpid, but 
on cooling, it is found to hold in suspense 
a fine, grayish powder, which renders the 
liquid somewhat milky. When this pow- 
der is separated by filtration it is found to 
consist of a combination of tanin and 
theine, perfect'y soluble in hot water, and 
insoluble in cold ; it is insipid, although 
formed of two very sapid matters — tanin, 
which has a rough, astringent taste ; and 
theine, which is intensely bitter. 

The infusion, filtered, gives, with a so- 
lution of subacetate of lead, an abundant 
yellowish-brown precipitate, which con- 
tains, in combination with the oxide of lead, 
all of the coloring matter, all the tanin, 
and a peculiar acid. 

The infusion of green tea contains less 
coloring matter than black, but furnishing 
a more abundant precipitate, when treated 
with the subacetate of lead solution, than 



black tea does. Finally, the principles 
contained in the infusion of the two sorts 
are precisely the same, only they differ a 
little in their proportions, black tea being 
a little less marked than green. 

With a little care most of the matters 
above named may be removed from tea by 
simply agitating the samples containing 
them briskly in a vial of distilled water 
for a few minutes, and then filtering;. In- 
soluble powders may be thus collected, 
while the soluble substances may be de- 
tected by chemical tests already pointed 
out in previous papers, to which reference 
may also be made for the poisonous prop- 
erties of the substances herein named. 



From the American Farmer. 

Eat Pork as Human Fgq&. 

" A fat hog is the very quintessence of 
scrofula and carbonic acid gas, and he who 
eats it must not expect thereby to build 
up a sound physical organism. While it 
contributes heat, not the twentieth part of 
it is nitrogen, the base of muscle." The 
Scientific American cordially endorses the 
above sentiment as being sound practical 
truth, and says — " Fat pork was never de- 
signed for human food. It is material for 
! breath, and nothing more. See Liebig and 
I other organic chemists and physiologists. 
! It makes no real meat or muscle. The 
! prize fighter is not allowed to eat it. All 
i that is not consumed by the lungs, remains 
to clog the body with fat." 



hog, and 
means hoggish. 



To the Editors of the Courier, ZancsviUe. 

The short article in yesterday's Courier, 
thus entitled, is calculated to mislead, and 
therefore I would offer the following re- 
marks in reference to our great Ohio sta- 
ple : 

A fat hog is truly the quintessence of 

1 scrofula, for scrofa in Greek is 
the derivative scrofulous 

IThe disease scrofula, was so called when 

'medical science was in its infancy, from 
its supposed resemblance to some diseases 
of the hog, and then the inference was 
easy, that eating the hog (scrofa) produced 
the hog disease (scrofula). It is "veil 

I known, however, that our American In- 
dians and the Hindoos, who never use 
pork, are liable to this disease; that in 
Europe it prevails chief y among the ill-fed 
poor, who hardly taste meat of any kind. 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER 



729 



On the other hand the Chinaman and 
3iir own pioneers, who hardly eat any other 
lesh, are remarkably healthy and exempt 
from scrofula — a disease we have much 
more reason to suspect as originating long 
ago from the hereditary taint of an un- 
mentionable disease favored by irregular 
living and poor diet. 

In the South, from their sleek appear- 
ance and exemption from scrofula, you can 
at once distinguish the bacon-fed negro. 

These examples may suffice on that head. 

Fat pork is not in any sense carbonic 
acid, but hydro-carbon, a combination of 
hydrogen and carbon. It becomes carbon- 
ic acid and water by combining with oxy- 
gen in the act of being burned or digest- 
ed, which is mnch the same thing — giving 
off during those processes large amounts 
of heat and light. 

It is true the fat of fat pork does not 
make blood or red flesh, though the lean 
which is always eaten alone does. It is as 
your article says truly, material for breath. 
Well, that is a good deal. It is supposed 
that if the writer's breath had stopped five 
minutes before he took his pen, we should 
never seen his article on fat pork. 

But it does more. All the fat that goes 
into the stomach and thence into the blood 
does not undergo slow burning in the 
lungs by the process of burning, but is de- 
posited in the body as human fat. Now a 
certain amount of fat is so necessary for 
the proper play of all the parts, muscles 
included, that without it, the body, like an 
ungreased engine, wears itself out by its 
own friction. In consumption, the waste 
of fat is one alarming and most dangerous 
symptom, and the far-famed cod-liver oil 
acts perhaps chiefly by supplying the blood 
with fat. 

I am satisfied by experience that fat 
pork — when the stomach will receive it — 
does just as well. Moreover, few of those 
delicate persons that have so great an aver- 
sion to pork or other fat, ever live to see 
40 years. They die young of consump- 
tion. Butter, sugar, starch, vegetable oils 
act, to some extent as animal fat, and in 
tropical climates are used as substitutes. 

But go to the arctic regions and see the 
refined Dr. Kane and his men devour raw 
walrus blubber with a gusto, as we would 
take a dish of ice cream, and you will con- 
clude that "fat pork," particularly in our 
arctic winters, is not so bad an institution. 



We could not live on fat pork alone — 
nor on sugar and starch — though we could 
on bread. Bread, the staff of life, con- 
tains the materials both for breathing and 
making blood and red flesh (muscle) in a 
supereminent degree, greater even than 
lean beef or any other single article of 
food, and this, or some substitute, such as 
beans, peas, potatoes, etc. is always eaten 
with fat pork, so that there is a sufficient 
supply of blood and flesh-making material. 
However, excess is bad, and the fat pork 
must not constitute the bulk of a meal. 

Chemical analysis is a poor substitute 
for the observation of facts in the living 
body, nor can we even base very much on 
experiments made on Mr. Martin, the man 
with the hole in his stomach, by which 
food can be introduced and digestion ob- 
served, for that is not nature's way of get- 
ting it there, and a stomach with such an 
unnatural opening is much like a leaky 
dinner pot with a hole in the bottom stuff- 
ed with a rag. Extended experience alone 
can settle such a question. 

The Greeks and Romans esteem pork as 
a luxury, and a most wholesome diet ; 
their athletic and gladiators (prize-fight- 
ers) were fed on pork, our own Saxon 
(Teutonic Scandinavian) ancestors esteem- 
ed it so highly that they, even in their 
heaven, provided a great hog with golden 
bristles, called Gulliborstli, of whose ba- 
con the heroes of Walhalla dined every 
day, when at night the picked bones again 
united and became covered with a fresh 
supply of fat pork. In this estimate of the 
hog, the mass of mankind, not of the 
Shemite race, (Jews, Turks, Arabs, etc.,) 
who follow Moses' law, that had spiritual 
and representative meaning, have, in all 
ages, agreed, and will agree, as long as 
man has canine teeth, and lives by draw- 
ing his breath. Whenever the Scientific 
American or Prof. Liebig will discover a 
new process of living, without breathing, 
we maybe guided by their opinion; till 
then, I opine, "good corn-fed (and no oth- 
er is good) pork" will rule the roast, of 
which themselves they will not be slow to 
partake. 

My remarks are, of course, only appli- 
cable to men, women and children, with 
comparatively healthy stomachs, who have 
sufficient exercise, with pure air and pure 
water. Yours, with respect, 

John G. F. Holston, A.M., M.D. 



730 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER 



minates fatally, much sooner than when 
the animal is affected with diarrhoea. 

High febrile action is usually present, 
and very frequently the skin of the 
affected animal becomes dark colored, 
showing a purplish, or lead-colored hue 
upon the back, legs, ears, or snout, or in 
all those parts, caused, no doubt, by the 
aneiialization of the blood. 

Some hogs have recovered after the cir- 
culation had become so languid that their 
ears dropped from their heads. 

I have no doubt but some of the cases 
attacked, would be benefitted by a dis- 
similar course of treatment from that pur- 
sued in other cases ; for, as mentioned 
above, all are not attacked precisely the 
same way, or, at least, the symptoms first 
noticed are not exactly the same. A few 
die immediately after they are attacked, 
or at most, very soon after they appear 
sufficiently unwell to attract attention — 
probably from intense or very great con- 
j gestion of the lungs, that being the only 
! appearance of diseased action noticeable 
When I first applied to for some remedy L fter death . V fat hogs are more apt 
for hogs affected with the disease, it was to die thus than ordi fc ° tock h 

by a personal friend, whose stock wasj A most thor h trial has bee * made 
suffering from its attacks, ana I had to re- 1 under directio b n for tw0 seasons of the 
ly upon the symptoms g.ven by him, and fol]owi ng remedial agen ts, and although 
after the action of the remedy from the; the mpdicine has been used for several 
large number of worms voided by thej hundred animals> but five or gix of the 
animals, I believed those parasites to be number ha ve died, as far as I have been 
the cause; but having afterwards noticed ! ab j e to i earn 

animals affected by the disease, I thought | In some i nstances very many of a lot 
the diagnosis incorrect, and then obtained j had died> and the rest near , or all sick 
results from the most minute examinations! when the me dicine was administered, and 
of many .hat were suffering from the dis-| no more died> j„ another illstance wh en 
ease as well as those that had died from ' a t were sick and others we „ the sick 
it, that changed my opinion. | one9 recovered> and the well ones did not 

The disease is a low, or typhoid inflam- take the disease. In other instances, some 
ination of the luns:s. Many of the ani- of a lot took the disease after the remedy 

had been given, but whether those that 

were afterward attacked, had partaken of 

the remed}'-, is a little doubtful, as the 

and amons those 



From I he American Veterinary Journal. 

Hog Cholera. 

Georgetown, Ohio, Sept. 1858. 

Mr. Editor : — Much has been said in 
relation to the disease known as " hog 
cholera,"' and many items published in re- 
gard to its cause, and the proper plan of 
cure, and having paid some attention to it 
for the last two seasons, with a hope of 
being some benefit to the many raisers 
and consumers of one of the products of 
our common country ; believing I may be 
of some benefit to others, I send you a 
short article upon the subject. 

I shall not enter into a lengthy detail 
for two reasons. In the first place, 1 have 
not the necessary time to spare; and 
secondly, for the kind of paper I design 
writing — being mostly for the use of stock- 
raisers — it is unnecessary. 

" Hog cholera " is a misnomer. The 
disease is not cholera, nor does it assimi- 
late to that disease. 



whole stock fed together, 



mals die without suppuration occurring; 
and in those cases, the lungs are found in 
a hepatized condition. Others pass from 
the hepatized to the suppurative stage, 

and show abcesses, large or small, in persons who have "fed the remedy to their 
some instances, almost an entire loss of j stock, are those who most confidently be- 
one or both lungs, while the intestinal , lieve an animal will not take the disease 
canal of the small intestines, is studded! if he has taken the medicine for two or 
with a milliary eruption, which, in some three days. 

instances, had undergone the suppurative | It has unquestionably been the means of 
process ; in either stage, no doubt, helping' saving very many hogs in this section of 
to produce, if not producing, the Diarrhoea country, but I do not suppose it or any 
is, however, not always present. Some- other remedy, will save all that are affect- 
limes constipation is an accompaniment, ed ; yet others who have fed this medi- 
and in such cases the disease usually ter-J cine to their stock believe it will do it. 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER 



731 



emarked, it renders the necessary quan- 
The remedy I ordered is not precisely 
er se chemically ; but I am not certain 
hat the decomposition occurring (in the 
nimal's stomach,) when the different in- 
redients unite, may not be more benefi- 
ial, or of some service ; at all events, it 
as apparently answered an excellent pnr- 
ose. I herewith annex the formula I have 
sed, hoping it may be as beneficial to the 
">any, as it has been to the few r : — 

Recipe. — Ferri Sulph. lb. j. (Copperas, 
pound.) 

Potassse Nitrates, lb. j. (Saltpetre, 1 
ound.) 
Zingiber Pulv. lb. ss. (Ginger \ pound.) 

Grind, or otherwise finely pulverize the 
•on and potash, then add the ginger, 
rive to each animal a teaspoonful every 
ay when bad, or once in two or three 
ays, if used as a preventative. 

I think it is rather better to give the 
ledicine in dry meal or bran, than to give 
; in slop, although many have thus fed it. 
t will be of little or no service to small 
igs, and probably of little benefit to 
reeding sows, enciente, and possibly an 
ijury- 

While speaking of the benefits derived 
:om Sulph. Ferri and Nit. Potassse to 
ogs, it may be of service to some of 
our readers to know that equal parts of 
lose two substances, given in table- 
poonful doses, once per day, or once! 
very second day, to cattle afflicted with! 
be disease known as " hollow T horn," are 
f 
ealth. 

The disease is readily detected by open- 
lg the animal's mouth and examining the 
ondition of the teeth. If the front teeth 
re found to be loose, so as to be readily 
loved back and forward — the outer end 
f the teeth only — there need be no dis- 
ute about the disease being that generally 
nown as " hollow horn," and the above 
emedy will ordinarily restore the ani- 
lal's appetite in three, four, or five days, 
nd put it in a good condition for rapidly 
mproving. Yours respectfully, 

THOS. W. GORDON, M. D. 

P. S. — We have men among us who 
hink paying any attention to the lower 
nimals, decidedly out of taste, and per- 
aps out of caste, for a physician. Those 
nen are usually called physicians, al- 



though, in many instances, they have not 
studied long enough to scarcely yet know 
the names of the bones composing the 
human skeleton. It is far beneath their 
dignity to prescribe for any animal whose 
capacity for knowledge is not fully equal 
to their own ; and I am inclined to the be- 
lief that the hogs, horses, and cattle, are 
really gainers by the self-incumbent digni- 
ty of such gentlemen, though bipeds may 
suffer. They laugh at a prescription for a 
hog; but my motive in life has been, and 
is, to do all I can to ameliorate the condi- 
tion of my fellow men, and when I can 
save their property, never to neglect what 
to me is a duty. Yours, 

GORDON. 



very great service in restoring them to 



Mr. Everett's Remarks on the Horse at 
the late Springfield Fair. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : — 
I believe one of the exploits of the distin- 
guished person to whom my friend Ash- 
mun has alluded, is to make the animals 
that are submitted to him lie down and go 
to sleep. [Applause and laughter.] I 
hope, sir, that my speaking, whatever 
other effect it might have, will not pro- 
duce that. #?#"#*#.,-# 

Sir, it is perplexing, it is almost painful 
to consider what high degrees of intellec- 
tual and moral power are evinced by ani- 
mals whom w r e profanely call brute beasts. 
I suppose it was a reflection on these 
noble qualities of the horse, intellectual 
and moral, that led the wittiest, the bitter- 
est, and, I am sorry to say, the filthiest of 
the satirists of our language — I mean 
Dean Swift — in that remarkable romance 
of his, the most fascinating as the most 
revolting of books, to represent the horse, 
under that unpronounceable name which 
he gives him, as the wiser, the more saga- 
cious, the nobler animal, and to describe 
the human race, under the disgusting 
character of Yahoo, as an inferior order of 
beings. I don't know, sir, but you will 
rather think it beneath the dignity of the 
occasion to allude to such a book as Gul- 
liver's Travels, and yet it does contain, 
among many most instructive remarks, 
one of those passages into which the wis- 
dom of ages is condensed in a single sen- 
tence, and which is more often quoted, at 
least part of it, at all agricultural and rural 
shows, than perhaps any other in the 



732 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



whole compass of literature. "The man," 
says Gulliver, " who dan make two years 
of corn or two blades of grass to grow on 
the spot where only one grew before, 
would deserve better of mankind and 
render a more essential service to the 
country than the whole race of politicians 
put together." [Laughter and applause.] 
When this is quoted at agricultural meet- 
ings by patriotic candidates for office, this 
last part of the sentence is generally omit- 
ted. [Renewed laughter.], 

The noble qualities of the horse seem, 
indeed, to have made an impression upon 
the most brutalized of our own species. 
I suppose it is this, if ij were w T orth 
while to account for the freaks of a mad- 
man, which led the Emperor Caligula 
to erect a marble stable for his horse, In- 
citatus, to provide him with an ivory 
manger, with housings of imperial purple. 
a breast-plate studded with diamonds and 
pearls, and then to elevate him to the 
dignity of the Consulship. This seems, 
to be sure, a mere freak of madness, and 
yet I am inclined to think that at that 
time it was a better choice than could 
have been made out of the venal courtiers 
and factious praetorians of the imperial 
court; and I believe, sir, had it been 
put to the vote throughout the Roman 
Empire, then co-extensive with the civi- 
lized world, they would have decided that 
they had a better consul in the horse 
than in the Emperor. [Laughter and ap- 
plause.] Sir, they had been too familiar 
with the rapacity of the tyrants who 
chased each other over the stage, dagger 
in hand, not to be pleased with the eleva- 
tion of a ruler who took nothing but oats 
out of the public crib [laughter] — a ruler, 
sir, who, while the reins were with him, 
would at least have given them a " stable " 
administration. [Renewed laughter.] 

I trust, sir, that the beautiful perform- 
ance of Mr. Rarey, to whicli my friend 
Ashmun has alluded, may be the means 
of diffusing some useful ideas in this re- 
spect throughout the community. Whether 
there is yet some unexplained means of 
influence in the possession of this gentle- 
man not shared by the rest of the com- 
munity, I know not : but one thing, I 
think, sir, is certain, that one great portion 
consists in gaining and keeping the affec- 
tions of the animal by gentle and kind 
treatment. For this, if for no other 



reason, he deserves the greatest credit 
for what he has done in this respect, ' 
although I believe he is not the first whci 
has succeeded by this same treatment in! 
subduing the wildness, changing even the 
native instincts of what are commonly 
called the almost untamable animals. J' 
often saw in the streets of London — and ] 
believe the same thing may be seen at' 
Barnum's Museum in New York — what 
was called "The Happy Family " a col- 
lection of animals, in a large wire cage, 
most hostile in their nature — cats and] 
rats, hawks and mice, owls and wrens, 
living together in these close quarters, inj 
the utmost amity and friendship. I asked! 
the showman what was the secret of 1 
the operation by which he brought about i 
those astonishing results. He told me itl 
was persevering kindness. He did not' 
say, sir, in what particular way that kind- 
ness was to be manifested. I believe part 1 
of it consisted in always keeping them 
supplied with plenty of the food they were 
fond of; but it was persevering kindness. 
My experience led me to think that the 
amicable relations thus established among 
the animals did not extend to outsiders; 
for I rather inadvertently put my finger 
through the bars of the cage, when a^ 
large rat sprang at it with such rapidity 
that I drew it back a great deal quicker 
than I put it in. [Laughter and applause.] 
] assure you that my bosom was overflow- 
ing with kindness toward every member 
of that •' Happy Family," not excepting 
the rat; but alter that demonstration on the 
part of the rat, I did not think it expedi- 
ent to persevere. [Laughter.] 

However this may be, sir, if there is 
any one who doubts that the horse — the 
animal that most concerns us on this occa- 
sion — is susceptible of the kindest feel- 
ings of our nature, I think he would be 
convinced of his error by a most interest- 
ing anecdote of Edmund Burke. In the 
decline of Mr. Burke's life when he was 
living in retirement on his farm at Bacons- 
field, the rumor went up to London that 
he had gone mad : and the fact that was 
stated in support of this rumor was that 
he went round his park kissing his cows 
and horses. A friend, a man of rank and 
influence, hearing the story, and deeming 
it of too much importance to be left un- 
corrected, hastened to Baconsfield, and 
sousrht an interview with the view of as- 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER 



733 



ertaining the truth of the rumor. Enter- 
ig into conversation with him, Mr. Burke 
ead to him some chapters from his " Let- 
3rs on Regicide." His friend immedi- 
tely saw that though the earthly tene- 
lent was verging back to its native dust, 
:ie lamp of genius and reason shone with 
ndiminished lustre. He was according- 
f more than satisfied as to the object of 
is coming down, and in a private inter- 
iew with Mrs. Burke told her what he 
ad come for, and received from her this 
athetic explanation. Mr. Burke's only 
hild, a beloved son, had not long before 
ied, leaving behind him a favorite horse, 
be companion of his excursions of bu- 
iness and pleasure, when both were 
oung and vigorous. This favorite ani- 
lal was of course turned out by Mr. 
5urke, the father, into the park, with di- 
ections to all his servants that he should 
a every respect be treated as a privileged 
avorite. Mr. Burke himself, of course, 
n his morning walks, would often stop to 
aress the favorite animal. On one occa- 
ion, as he was taking his morning walk 
hrough the park, he perceived the poor 
Id animal at a distance, and noticed that 
ie was recognized by him. The horse 
Irew nearer and nearer to Mr. Burke, 
topped, eyed him with the most pleasing 
ook of recognition, which said, as plainly 
is words could have said : " I have lost 
lim, too ;" and then the poor dumb beast 
leliberately laid his head upon Mr. 
Burke's bosom ! Struck by the singul- 
arity of the occurrence ; struck by the 
ecollection of his son, whom he had 
lever ceased to mourn with a grief that 
vould not be comforted ; overwhelmed by 
,he tenderness of the animal, expressed 
n the mute eloquence of holy Nature's 
universal language, the illustrious states- 
nan for a moment lost his self-possession, 
ind clasping his arms around the neck of 
lis son's favorite animal, lifted up that 
iroice which had caused the arches of 
Westminster Hall to echo the noblest 
drains that ever sounded within them, 
and wept aloud ! Sir, this was seen, this 
was heard by the passers by, and the 
enemies of Burke, unappeased by his ad- 
vancing years, by his failing health, by 
his domestic sorrows, made it the ground 
of a charge of insanity. Burke is gone ; 
but, sir, so help me Heaven ! if I were 
called upon to designate the event or the 



period in Burke's life that would best sus- 
tain the charge of insanity, it would not 
be when, in a gush of the holiest and 
purest feeling that ever stirred the human 
heart, he wept aloud on the neck of a 
dead son's favorite horse. 



The Preservation of "Wine. 

Wine is sometimes sulphurized as a 
preservative, and often so excessively as 
quite to taint it. The sulphur is burnt in 
the casks and bottles, and then the wine 
is poured in. If, by chance, the sulphur 
is arsenical, then a slight dose of arsenic 
is administered to the public, far too in- 
nocent to understand whence comes the 
side-wind which blows them illness and 
disease. Cloves, cinnamon, lavender, 
thyme, and other aromatic substances, are 
used to weaken the influence of the sul- 
phur, and the combination gives a pecu- 
liar taste and odour. 

They are burnt in the casks together 
with the strips of linen dipped in sulphur, 
and the whole horrible medley of taste 
and smell passes for " bouquet" by the 
multitude, who believe what their wine 
merchants tell them, and praise ac- 
cording to price. Jn France, one-thou- 
sandth part of pulverized mustard seed is 
put in to prevent any after fermentation ; 
but the greatest secret seems to be, to pre- 
serve the wine from any contact with the 
outside air. 

Some Malaga wine, which had been 
buried during the great fire of London — 
that is to say, in sixteen hundred and six- 
ty-six — was dug up twenty years ago, and 
though nearly two hundred years old, 
was found perfectly good, well-flavoured, 
and full-bodied. Exclusion of air alone 
would not have preserved it ; sweet and 
alcoholic, it bore in itself the elements of 
longevity ; had it not been poor in sugar 
and rich in acids, it would have been dug 
up a vinous skeleton. Wine kept in wood 
loses much of its water by evaporation ; 
the same may be said of that kept in 
leather and skins. By this diminution of 
water, the alcohol remaining is concentra- 
ted and strengthened ; but only originally 
strong wines can be so treated. With 
weak and acid wines, the very concentra- 
tion increases the formation of tartaric 
acid, and that, without the proper coun- 
terbalance of alcohol, spoils all. This 



734 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



e vaporation does not go on in glass bottles, 
a nd Saint Vincent therefore recommend- 
ed tliat all bottles should be secured by 
bladders, not corks, so that evaporation 
might not be carried on in them. His ad- 
vice has not been followed. 

Hunt's Merchants' Magazine. 



An Item in E"eat Farming. 

There is a slovenly practice among far- 
mers, and some pretty good ones, of put- 
ting logs, brush, stumps, &.c, &c, into the 
nearest branch or gully in the field. Some- 
times they are put into the fence corners. 
Now I protest against anything of the 
kind. They are an abomination to a real 
neat farmer. If you cannot find time to 
burn them as they should be, then you 
had better make them into piles or heaps 
in the field, and plow round them ; for 
after awhile you will get tired of going 
around them so often, and will set them 
on fire. Better dig pits, like the Florida 
man, and bury them. 

Some men suffer bushes, briers and 
weeds to grow along the branches and 
thus form a crooked, horrible looking 
hedge, a fit harbour for snakes, frogs, 
minks, and other varmints. Clean out 
those places when you are tending your 
crops or after harvest. 

Instead of letting the bushes grow up 
along the branches, a good plan is to have 
a strip of meadow on each side. Along 
the margin of a branch the grass grows 
most luxuriantly, A strip of meadow 
will catch the rich soil that washes from 
the adjacent fields and prevent it from be- 
ing lost to the rightful owner. This is 
much better than to try to raise corn in 
the bends or crooks of the branches, 
where it is so difficult to plow, and in- 
finitely better than to have those ugly, 
crooked hedges. Brother farmer, I move 
that we repudiate such hedges. Who'll 
second the motion ? — Valley Farmer. 



A Chinese Garden. 

Mr. Fortune gives a curious description 
of a Chinese Garden in a recent letter, 
from which we make the following ex- 
tracts : 

"The plants consist of good specimens 
of Southern Chinese things, all well known 
in England, such, for example, as Cym. 



bidium sinense. Olea fiagans, Oranges 
Camellias, Magnolias, etc., and, of course 
multitudes of dwarf trees, without whicl 
no Chinese garden would be considere< 
complete. In the above alluded to then 
are some nice stone seats, which lool 
cool in a climate like that of Southeri 
China. The floor of this building is rais 
ed a few feet above the ground level, si 
that the visitor gets a good view of tin 
water and other objects of interest in th< 
garden. That this is a favourite loungi 
and smoking place with the Chinese, th< 
following Chinese notice, which we fount 
on one of the pillars, will testify: — 'J. 
careful and earnest notice : This gardei 
earnestly requests that visitors will spi 
betel outside the railing, and knock th« 
ashes of pipes also outside.' Several fin* 
fruit-trees and others are growing near th< 
walks, and afford shade from the rays o 
the sun. On one of these we read thti 
following: ' Ramblers here will be excusec 
plucking the fruit on this tree.' How ex 
ceedingly polite ! 

" Near the centre of the garden stand: 
a substantial summer-house, or hall, nam 
ed the < Hall of Fragrant Plants.' Th« 
same notice to smokers and chewers o 
betel nut is also put up here, and there hj 
another and a longer one which I musj 
not forget to quote. It is this : ' In thhj 
garden the plants are intended to deligh! 
the eyes of all visitors ; a great deal hail 
been expended in planting and in keeping 
in order, and the garden is now beginning 
to yield some return. Those who come, 
here to saunter about are earnestly prayecj 
not to pluck the fruit or flowers, in ordeii 
that the beauty of the place may be pre-j 
served.' And then follows a piece of 
true Chinese politeness: "We beg per 
sons who understand this notice to excuse 
it!' Passing through the Hall of Fra- 
grant Plants, we approached, between two 
rows of Olea fragrans, a fine ornamental 
suite of rooms tastefully furnished and 
decorated, in which visitors are received 
and entertained. An inscription informs' 
us that this is called the • Fragrant Ha 
of the Wooche tree.' Leaving this place 
by a narrow door, we observe the follow-j 
ing notice: ' Saunterers here will be ex- 
cused entering.' This apparently leads 
to the private apartments of the family 
In this side of the garden there is some 
artificial rockwork, which the Chinese 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



735 



know well how to construct, and various 
summer-houses tastefully decorated, one 
df which is called the 'Library of Ver- 
dant Purity.' Between this part of the 
garden and the straight walk already no- 
iced there is a small pond or lake for fish 
ind water lilies. This is crossed by a 
zigzag wooden bridge of many arches, 
which looked rather dilapidated." 

Maine Farmer. 



The Anthracite Coal Trade. 
Thirty-one years ago the first coal went 
:o Philadelphia, being ten wagon loads 
lauled over the mountains by George 
Shoemaker of Pottsville. Very few per- 
sons could be induced to purchase it, and 
nost of these were wholly unsuccessful 
n their attempt to make it burn. Every- 
)ody considered it a mere stone. Mr. 
Shoemaker was denounced in all quarters 
is a cheat, and measures were being taken 
;o arrest him for swindling; but he es- 
caped arrest by leaving the city by a cir- 
cuitous road, and did not stop until he had 
rot thirty miles on his homeward journey, 
rhe most remarkable feature in this ex- 
;raordinary speculation was, that Mr. 
Shoemaker did not himself know how to 
make the coal burn. He was therefore 
jnable to convince the public that it really 
would ignite. Had he experimented at 
lome, and brought with him a grate stove 
in which to kindle a successful fire, the 
exhibition would have, no doubt, hastened 
full ten years the development of the coal 
Dusiness. He reached home disgusted at 
;he belligerent temper of the citizens, and 
heart-sick at the ill success of his adven- 
:ure. His reputation as an honest man 
was rescued, however, by an iron master 
in Delaware county, into whose hands 
some of the repudiated mineral acciden- 
tally fell. He tried coal, caused it to burn 
freely with an intense heat, and was so 
pleased with it that he proclaimed the fact 
in the 'newspapers. This led others to 
try, and they also succeeded ; the preju- 
dice was removed, and consumption went 
Dn from this disastrous beginning, until it 
last year reached the enormous quantity 
3f 3,476,862 tons. But up to this date 
the depression of manufacturing has 
caused a reduction of $300,000 tons to be 
sent to market, and the whole year un- 
doubtedly shows a falling off of lull 600,- 
000 tons. — Miner's Journal. 



The Best Wealth. 

The great struggle with civilized men 
in this world is for wealth. This is called 
the prime good, the one thing needful, the 
great desideratum of life. So men toil 
for it ; sacrifice ease, comfort, health for 
it; give time, strength, and too often good 
character for it. The truth is, the estimate 
put upon wealth is too high. Its value, its 
good is over-rated. It is not the great 
good. It is not the pearl of great price. 
It is not the best thing man can have. It 
does not confer peace of mind, nor purity 
of heart, heartfelt happiness, nor content- 
ment, nor home-joy, nor social blessed- 
ness, nor any of the solid and enduring 
enjoyments. 

Wealthy homes are not often happier 
than those of the poor and comfortable 
livers. Poverty is always an evil; but a 
fair supply of the necessaries and com- 
forts of life is quite as apt to confer real 
peace, as great wealth. It is not gold nor 
goods, therefore, that make men really 
wealthy. The best wealth is of the heart, 
an enlightened mind, a loyal conscience, 
pure affections. He is wealthiest who has 
the largest stock of wisdom, virtue and 
love — whose heart beats with warm sym- 
pathies for his fellow men, who finds good 
in all seasons, all providences, and all 
men. The generous man who pities the 
unfortunate ; the pure man who resists 
temptation ; the wise man who orders 
well his life; the loving man who clings 
closely to his family and friends ; the stu- 
dious man who seeks instruction in all 
things, are the truly wealthy men. 

Valley Farmer. 



To make Pure Apple Wine. 

Take pure cider made from sound ripe 
apples, as it runs from the press; put 
sixty pounds of common brown sugar into 
fifteen gallons of the cider, and let it dis- 
solve ; then put the mixture into a clean 
barrel, and fill the barrel up to within two 
gallons of being full of clean cider, put 
the cask in a cool place, leaving the bung 
out for forty-eight hours ; then put in the 
bung, with a small vent, until fermenta- 
tion wholly ceases, and bung up tight, and 
in one year the wine will be fit for use. 
This wine requires no racking; the longer 
it stands upon the lees, the better. — Maine 
Farmer. 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



For the Planter. 

Humbuggery the Order of the Bay. 
Mr. Editor: 

In glancing over the contents of your 
November number my attention was ar- 
rested by a notice of "a miraculous corn ;" 
that being a favorite plant of mine, with 
which I have been experimenting for up- 
wards of forty years, with as many varie- 
ties as years I turned to the page contain* 
ing its description, when lo, and behold ! 
I met with an old acquaintance, (from 
whom I am seeking a divorce,) the " Wy- 
andotte prolific corn." Some three years 
since I was presented by a gentleman with 
an ear of that variety, the most beautiful 
I had ever seen, and in my judgment 
promised to rival wheat in the manufac- 
ture of flour, with a product promised 
equal to the one certified in the above 
number. I then considered a desidera- 
tum obtained, in quest of which I had made 
so many experiments, and my labors ended 
in them. A favorable spot in my garden 
was selected forthe reception of the grain, 
and that prepared in the best manner my 
judgment sanctioned. The corn came up, 
grew apace, and threw out the sprouts as 
advertized. I awaited anxiously the pre- 
sentation of ears promised without the 
fulfilment of ray expectation ; at gather- 
ing time I received something like a peck 
very badly matured, with a promise on 
the stalk of a better yield, should the ma- 
turing season continue several months 
longer ; but the season did not delay, 
hence I was minus the yield. The corn 
continued to be puffed in the agricultural 
and political papers, and being loth to 
abandon it on the above experiment, and 
finding the "pure seed" advertised in Bal- 
timore by its agent, I procured a quart of 
it, which cost at the rate of $240 per 
barrel, planted it as in the first instance, 
with a corresponding result. During the 
present year I have planted the Peabody 
corn, and from present appearances I shall, 
gather rather more than the seed planted, 
of the most unpromising appearance. This 
is not the extent of my being victimized 
to humbuggery. A few years since I was 
presented with the Oregon pea, a beauti- 
ful one in appearance ( with a promise of 
an unprecedented yield, on rich or poor 
land, and an unparalleled fertilizer, in all j 
of which I was wofully disappointed. The 
pea was advertized at $80 per bushel, 



and I advised my farming brethren not tc< 
make a large outlay in that article, at 40 
cents per bushel, for which I received a 
ca.stigation from a correspondent of the 
"American Farmer" upon the ground that 
his experiment had been more successful 
than mine, and that he had not seen the 
pea as early as I had made the experi- 
ment. Supposing from his premises that 
it was necessary for him to inspect the ar- 
ticle and pronounce it pure or spurious, Ij 
yielded him the field, since wiiich time I 
have heard no more of the Oregon pea or 
its advocate, as a bearer or fertilizer. 
Next in course came the Japan pea, beau- 
tiful in appearance, and highly recom- 
mended as a fertilizer, but its yield was 
no better than the Oregon. In its train 
followed the Chinese prolific, with a worse 
return than those above named. In view 
of the above, I am inclined to think I 
have contributed to humbuggery my full 
portion, and shall surrender the ground to 
such as may be as credulous as I have 
been. Richard Rouzee. 

Oakland, Essex County, Va. ) 
November 2nd, 1858. ( 



A Hard and Durable Soap. 
A patent has been granted in England 
for an improvement in the manufacture of 
soap, by the addition of sulphate of lime 
to the usual ingredients employed in its 
manufacture. The sulphate may be added 
with any of the usual ingredients employ- 
ed in the manufacture of soap. The pro- 
portions of the sulphate which it is best to 
employ, vary according to the article man- 
ipulated upon, and the quality of the soap 
to be produced. Thus about twelve oun- 
ces of dry sulphale is sufficient for one ton 
of best soap, whereas, in common or 
highly liquored soap, six or eight pounds 
may be used with advantage. Soap, made 
with the addition of sulphate of lime be- 
comes hardened, keeps dry, and is not lia- 
ble to ^hrink while in water, its durability 
is increased, and it does not wear or waste 
away before its cleansing properties are 
brought into action. — Scientific American. 

— . < ♦ » • > 

The Early Dead. 

Some one has said of those who die 
young, that they are like the lambs which 
Alpine shepherds bear in their arms to 
greener pastures, that the flocks may fol- 
low. — Maine Farmer. 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



737 



For the Planter. 

On the Stimulating Properties of Guano— 

A&eplyto "X." 
Mr. Editor : 

It has not been B.'s purpose to even seem 
to disregard so formidable an antagonist as 
" X." of the Republican, nor to allow him to 
take to himself " the flattering unction" of 
having driven his antagonist from the field. 
Various circumstances have conspired to pre- 
clude an earlier reply. 

At the outset " X." will be pleased to call 
on B. to assure him, that he has written 
nought with ill will — that he has had no de- 
sign to *' pitch into him." No, he would not 
hurt a hair of his head. B.'s aim has been 
higher than this ; it has been, so far as his 
feeble powers might enable him. to expose 
what he regarded as error, both practically and 
scientifically, and thereby contribute a mite to 
the advancement of practical and scientific ag- 
riculture. If "X." has in any way suffered, 
it has fallen out to him by having placed him- 
self in a vulnerable position. The taunting 
charge of " great cry and no wool," and " emp- 
ty phrase," B. does not suffer to disturb his 
equanimity — aware that such things not only 
contain no argument, but indicate the want of 
it. Ridicule is the weapon ordinarily appeal- 
ed to when facts and arguments have been ex- 
hausted and failed to secure victory. 

If the readers of the S. Planter are such 
gumps as " X." makes them to be, it might 
well be regarded as time and labour thrown 
away to write or print anything for them. 
Says " X." : " If Mr. B. can prove his asser- 
tions to the satisfaction of the numerous rea- 
ders of the S. Planter, they will necessarily 
infer that I (' X/) am right, and always will 
be right, and that Mr. B. had no substantial 
ground for an attack on me. But if he (B.) 
cannot prove his assertions, then our readers 
must infer that I am right and Mr. B. is 
wrong again." Now, it is certainly exceeding- 
ly disingenuous in " X." to require of B. 
proof of any assertion, knowing, as he here 
declares, that the cards are so stocked against 
him, that the result will be the same whether 
his assertions are proven or not. To have the 
" rara avis in terra" of a man, that " always 
will be right," B. is willing to attempt the 
proof of any assertion he has made. But, 
apart from this consideration, there is but one 
that he cares much to prove, and that is, that 
Guano does not merely stimulate and impov- 
erish the soil, furnishes no pabulum for the 
plant, but does furnish nutriment to the plant 
and. fertility to the soil. " X." ought to know 
that th's is the paramount question at issue be- 
tween him and B. If he has forgotten let 
him refer to the June No. of the Planter, 
page 379 ; he will there find written : " Here- 
in consists the very gist of the question in 



dispute. If Guano stimulates and impover- 
ishes the soil, and Rhode's Superphosphate 
furnishes nutritious materials and enriches, 
then "X." is right, and B. wrong. But, on 
the other hand, if Guano applied to the soil will 
greatly increase the crop, and leave the land 
greatly improved in fertility, then B. is right, 
and " X." wrong. " X." takes no notice of this, 
but mounts his favourite hobby and cries, "I 
still contend that Guano stimulates the soil." 
This calls to mind an anecdote heard in years 
gone by, of two bull dogs and a monkey, kept 
by a gentleman for his amusement. The dogs 
were one day observed in hot pursuit of the 
monkey, who escaped capture by running up a 
pole standing near by. Pug, though out of pres- 
ent danger, yet, seemingly, desiring more com- 
fortable quarters, began to clap his hands, (fore 
feet,) and thereby got the dogs into a fight ; 
and while the dogs were fighting, he made 
good a safe retreat. " X." well knows it mat- 
ters but little whether " Guano stimulates the 
soil or the plant," if, indeed, it impoverishes 
the soil, and Rhode's Superphosphate furnishes 
solid food for the plant, and substantial fertil- 
ity to the soil. 

Says " X." : " That Guano stimulates the. 
soil, I could have said to the farming commu- 
nity of the whole globe. Why, then, should I not 
thus address the leading journal in the 'Great 
West?' Will Mr. B. face to the music and 
answer?" B. faces to the music and answers, 
that a spade should be called a spade because 
it is a spade and not a broad-axe; so "X." 
should have written, " stimulate the plant, (if 
indeed he must have ' stimulate/) and not 
stimulate the soil, because the soil is not and 
cannot be stimulated." If, indeed, " X." could 
have said to the farming community of the 
whole globe that " Guano stimulates the soil," 
this gives no right to thus address leading 
journals in the " Great West," any more than 
having humbugged ten men gives the right to 
humbug the eleventh. 

B. bids a kindly adieu to " X.," wishing 
him a pleasant airing upon his gallant hobby. 
And in conclusion, takes leave to say, that he 
would not willingly prejudice any one against 
Rhode's Superphosphate. Let it command all 
its due, but let it not, nor any of its kindred, 
usurp the throne and reign king over Pe- 
ruvian Guano. J. D. S. 



For the Planter. 

Staunton Nurseries. 
Staunton, Va., Oct. 16th, 1858. 
Editor Southern Planter: 

Dear Sir — I have this day forwarded to 
your office a box containing 34 varieties 
of apple and 1 of pear. They are not 
generally over medium sized specimens, 
and some are imperfect, the latter part of 



738 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



the season having been so dry as to effect 
the crop very materially ; in ordinary sea- 
sons all these varieties do well with us. 
You will see by the specimens sent that 
some of the Northern sorts are much 
larger and better here than when grown at 
the North — a fact that goes to prove the 
adaptedness of our soil and climate to the 
growth and perfection of that fruit. 

I would speak more particularly of some 
varieties, but time forbids at present. 

Hoping the box will reach you safely, 
I remain, Yours, Respectfully, 

Franklin Davis. 

"We return our thanks to Mr. Davis for the 
box of delicious apples, which reached us 
safely. Among the specimens, we admired 
greatly the Bellflower, Gloria Mundi, Col- 
breath's Russett Rambo, Tallawater, Pennsyl- 
vania Pippin, Spitzenberg, &c. 

They were all much to our taste. 

[Ed. So. Pl. 



H 



A CARD. 

Royal Oak, Talbot Co., Md., 
October 21, 1858 

To the Editor of the " Southern Planter,'' 

Richmond, Va. 

Sir — I am directed to request the pub- 
lication, in the Southern Planter, of the 
following proceedings of our Society, viz: 

At a meeting of the Board of Trustees 
of the Maryland Agricultural Society for 
the Eastern Shore, held at "Wye Cot- 
tage," the 30th September, the following 
resolutions were adopted : 

Resolved, As the opinion of this Board, 
that the operation of the Grain Inspection 
Law of the State is beneficial to the inter- 
est of the Farmer, and we therefore ad- 
vise the said law to be sustained. 

Resolved further, As the judgment of 
the Board that, if the said law be general- 
ly sustained by those who sell grain in the 
Baltimore market, our next State Legisla- 
ture will be justified in greatly reducing 
the present costs of grain inspection. 

(Signed) M. T. Goldsborough, 

President. 

Edm'd L. F. Hardcastle, Sec'y. 

I am, very respectfully, yours, 
EDM'D L. F. HARDCASTLE, 
Secretary. 



Wool and Woolens. 
The supply of wool promises to be in- 
adequate to the wants of the manufactu- 
rers. The demand for the clip this year 
was quite animated, and prices soon rose, 
so as to check purchases. It was found, 
however, that the supply of wool was 
really less than there had been reason to 
expect, since the high prices of the last 
few years have not induced any increase 
in production. The high prices last year 
had, however, induced imports to some ex- 
tent from England. This year prices have 
been leas here, but they have risen abroad 
under the same influences that have im- 
proved the prospects of the cotton market, 
viz: abundance of cheap food. The pri- 
ces here have been comparatively as fol- 
lows : 

. ~ roo-*Nom(M^(X)HMoo 

3 „• iO -* CO CO ^F CO CO <M CN i— i ft- i Ol i-* 

■*? ZZ O CO CM O CO TT O OO CO O O 04 t— I 
J< O ""* CO CO CO CO CO i— I CM r— 1 i— I i— I r— I 



-3p ®®®®®®®3X§>®3(g)® 



lOOOWOOSOOMOOO | O 
t^,h-I o -* ^ CO -* ^ CO CO CO -— I — I I CM 

lis ®(!)®®®®®®®®S(§>3) 

K H oooOT»o:ci&o^nt)C^ 



0) o 



S 'Z ~* 9 3 T3 ya 



p t3 a S 2 « 

- * fit o-S^ 
S "S * ' ° | M 






« o ■ 

o 



g 3 S « M 3 O d C «! . =3 S 

The prices of American have nearly re- 
covered, but those of foreign descriptions 
have not. In England and on the conti- 
nent, on the other hand, prices are rising 
rapidly. It follows, as a matter of course, 
that the imports of foreign wools decline. 
For the nine months to October 1st, they 
have been at Boston .only 7,171,468 lbs. 
against 11,270,727 lbs. same time last year, 
which was a quantity nearly double that 
of the preceding year. Under the suppo- 
sition that the quantity of the wool used 
in the country is, as estimated, 100,000,- 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



739 



300 lbs., a decline of 4,000,000 in the im- 
port is a serious matter, being no less than 
four per cent, of the supply, and the home 
supply does not increase as the high pri- 
ces would naturally lead to expect. The 
low prices which have ruled in the past 
year will, on the other hand, discourage 
the receipt of foreign wool, although a sale 
Df nearly 1,000,000 lbs. Chinese wool, held 
in New York, last week brought very good 
prices, higher than the quality (which was 
low) would warrant for the present state 
of the market for carpets. The stoppage 
Df many of the large, factories has greatly 
reduced the consumption of wool in the 
past year; probably 30,000,000 lbs. less 
has been taken by the factories, but cer- 
tain qualities of wool are yet very scarce. 
The production of delaines has been large 
by the three great companies engaged in 
that description of goods, and their wares 
were never more attractive. They have 
produced nearly as follows for the year: 

Yards. 
Manchester— Delaines, - 7,000,000 

Pacific " - 7,200,000 

Hamilton " - 6,900,000 

Total three companies, - 21,100,000 

This is equal to 2,000,000 dresses for 
ladies, certainly not a very large supply, 
since there were in the country in 1850, 
9,526,666 females, which would give one 
delaine dress among four, and if we de- 
duct females under five years, one dress 
among three in a year, exclusive of the 
impoited delaines, which hold their ground 
with much difficulty against the improved 
production of the three mills named. The 
rise in wool and the recovery of the mar- 
kets abroad for these styles of dress goods 
makes the American markets far less im- 
portant this year to the English and French 
producers. The prospect here, therefore, 
is certainly favorable to the expectation of 
a rise in t ho goods equal to the improved 
value of the raw material. The sale of 
coarse wools alluded to above went at an 
advance of some 2a3c. per lb., being in 
demand for carpets and such descriptions 
of goods as the fine American wools are 
hardly adapted to. The quantity of car- 
peting imported into the country seems to 
be very small, as compared with the wants 
of the country. Thus in 1857 the whole 
quantity of all descriptions — Wilton, Sax- 
ony, Brussels, Ingrain, &c. — was 1,714,- 



393 yards. In the city of New York 
alone, according to the census of 1855, the 
number of dwellings is as follows : 



Stone, 
Brick, 
Frame, 
Other, 



No. 
1,617 

29,977 

10,395 

333 


Cost. 
132,267,819 

211,531,806 

28,900,745 

781,920 



Total, 



- 42,668 $273,481,811 



If we take stone and brick houses only 
the number is 31,594, which would aver- 
age an area on one floor only of 20x50 
feet, to carpet which would require in this 
city alone 4,271,300 yards of cloth. The 
stairs, hall, basement, and upper rooms, 
are, however, always carpeted, as are most 
of the frame houses. The quantity really 
required is not under 12,000,000 yards for 
the city of New York. In the supposition 
that the carpets last seven years, the an- 
nual demand is 1,750,000 yards, or the 
quantity of carpets imported last year, to 
supply the city of New York alone. All 
the carpet demand for the interior of this 
State, and of all the other States and cities-, 
therefore falls upon the home production. 
The carpets are, however, imported in the 
following proportion : 





Yards. 


Price. 


nto Boston, 


276,849 


$238,136. 


Portland, 


6,215 


4;*Mh 


New York, 


1,072,307 


1,242,338 


Philadelphia, 


239,172 


202,316. 


Baltimore, 


25,607 


23,285 


Charleston, 


14,806 


12,755 


Mobile, 


130 


191 


New Orleans, 


37,690 


S'8,187' 


San Francisco, 


41,296 


21,990- 




1,714,093 


$1,784,196. 



The imports at New York averaged a 
cost of about $1.20 per yard. At Boston 
under 90c, and at the other ports about 
the same low prices, except an importation, 
which seems to have been a special one, 
at Mobile, at $1.50 per yard. The figures 
here presented show; how small is the im- 
port (rade in carpets as compared' with the 
wants of the country, and reciprocally how 
large is the interest of carpet makers, who 
heretofore have suffered under a tax upon 
the wools they use, while American agri- 
culture supplies them with none of the 
necessary quality. For the coarse wools 
necessary for the making of carpets, the 
manufacturers are dependent upon the im- 



740 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



porters for a supply of the proper mate- 
rial, which has heretofore been charged 
with an onerous duty. — U. S. Economist. 



Manuring in the Hill. 

A Sausage Story. — An old friend of 
ours — one sick and tired of the care and 
bustle of a city life, has retired into the 
country, and "gone to farming," as the 
saying is. His land, albeit well situated 
and commanding sundry fine prospects, is 
not so particularly fertile as some we have 
seen — requiring scientific culture and a 
liberal system of manuring to induce an 
abundant yield. So far by way of expla- 
nation. 

Once upon a time our friend being upon 
a short visit to New Orleans, was attend- 
ing an auction sale down town, and as it 
so happened, they were selling damaged 
sausages at the time. There were some 
eight or ten barrels of them, and they 
were " just going at 50 cents a barrel," 
when the auctioneer, with all apparent se- 
riousness, remarked that they were worth 
more than that to manure land with. Here 
was an idea. " Sixty-two and a half cents 
— third and last call — gone !" retorted the 
auctioneer. " Cash takes them at sixty- 
two and a half cents per barrel !" 

To have them shipped to his country 
seat was the immediate work of our friend, 
and as it was then planting time, and the 
sausages, to use a common phrase, " were 
getting no better very fast," to have them 
safe underground and out of the way was 
his next movement. He was about to 
plant a field of several acres of corn — the 
soil of the piny woods species — so here 
was just the spot for this new experiment 
in agriculture, this new wrinkle in the sci- 
ence of geoponics. One " link" of sau- 
sage being deemed amply sufficient, that 
amount was placed in each hill, accompa- 
nied by the usual number of kernels of 
corn anil an occasional pumpkin seed, and 
all were nicely covered over in the usual 
style. Now, after premising that several 
days have occurred since the corn was 
planted, the sequel of the story shall be 
told in a dialogue between our friend and 
one of his neighbours. 

Neighbour. — Well, friend, have you 
planted your corn ? 

Friend. — Yes, several days since. 

JV. Is it up yet? 



F. Up! yes : and gone; the most of 
it. 

JV. How is that ? 

F. Well, you see, I bought a lot of 
damaged sausages the other day in New 
Orleans, a smooth tongue of an auctioneer 
saying they would make excellent manure 
if nothing else. I brought the lot over, 
commenced planting my corn at once, as 
it was time, planted a sausage in each hill, 
and — 

JV. Well, and what ? 

F. And felt satisfied that I had made a 
good job of it. Some days afterwards I 
went out to see how the corn was coming 
on, and a pretty piece of business I have 
made of trying agricultural experiments. 

JV W T hy, what was the matter ? 

F. Matter ! The first thing I saw be- 
fore reaching the field was the greatest lot 
of dogs digging and scratching all over it ! 
There were my dogs, and your dogs, and 
all the neighbours' dogs, besides about 
three hundred strange dogs I never set my 
eyes on before, and every one was hard at 
it mining after the buried sausages. Some- 
how or other, the rascally whelps had 
scented out the business, and they have 
dug up every hill by this time. If 1 could 
set every dog of them on that auclioneer, 
I'd be satisfied. [Writer unknown.] 



From the Boston Cultivvtor. 

Sociability. 

It is not enough for us to be wise, but 
social and friendly also. We have no fac- 
ulty lavished upon us without design ; even 
instinct itself is enough to demonstrate 
this, without the assistance of philosophy. 
A cold heart, a morose countenance, an 
indifferent or unbenevolent disposition, 
though stuffed with all the treasures of 
erudition, are but'a slur upon human na- 
ture and a burthen to existence. Happi- 
ness can only inhabit the cheerful mind ; 
peevishness embitters resolution. It is the 
sunshine of a benevolent heart which scat- 
ters the clouds of uneasiness and electri- 
fies every human principle. Rational 
mirth and seasonable diversion give life 
and spring to every enjoyment. Let the 
austere stoic frown on sociability and eve- 
ry amusement, yet he will at times lose 
his morose temper and mingle with the 
social circle. Nature, when circumscri- 
bed by austerity, breaks over those bounds 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTEK. 



741 



at times, to enjoy social gratification. I 
do not speak against this most excellent of 
all the human faculties, but encourage it in 
every one with as much ardor as does any 
divine, nor confine it to so narrow limits 
as to debar it of the proper influence in 
society. 

Virtue neither honors nor needs any 
limitation. Vice only minds restraint. No 
generous affection is in the least danger of 
harming any one, its latitude being never 
so large. The farther it extends the more i 
universally benevolence pervades every] 
grade of society. No one will ever think 
of restraining any humane desire but he 
who never harbors a sympathetic emotion 
in his own breast. It is only the surly 
child of envy which makes anyone doubt 
the sincerity of another's friendship. An- 
gels are the exercisers of friendly affec- 
tions. Deity, himself, is love ! Shall man 
then who bears his holy image, shrink 
from the exercise of it, chill every social 
affection and freeze every sympathetic 
emotion with moroseness ? Happiness is 
the great desire of every being. We were 
all made and designed for that end ; and 
society being the only way in which civi- 
lized beings can hope to enjoy it, let any 
one who cherishes the inclination, cheer- 
fully contribute his genial spark to kindle 
and enliven the social flame, which shall 
light us all to everlasting felicity ! 

Philo. 



Governor Banks on the Parmer. 

Gov. Banks delivered the address before 
the Agricultural Society at Amherst, Mass. 
After speaking of the great general pro- 
gress of America, and the part which 
farmers have taken therein, especially dur- 
ing the past year, when their products 
amounted* in value to sixteen hundred 
millions of dollars, he saiJ : — 

This is what agricultural industry con- 
tributes to the wealth of the country ! A 
yearly contribution ; a contribution in dol- 
lars and dimes merely, and not embracing 
an estimate of its physical strength, capa- 
city for endurance, the love of labour and 
the moral power, with which agricultural 
industry invests communities wherever it 
prevails. In this view we confine our 
consideration strictly to those who make 
field culture the business of life. Beyond 
this, how wide the influence which it exerts 
upon other pursuits? Whence do we de- 



rive the vigorous intellect of professional 
life that adorns society with its varied ac- 
complishments, and protects individuals in 
the enjoyment of life, health, and their 
moral and personal rights ? Whence comes 
that vigorous and exhaustless intellect that 
revels in new channels of thought, and by 
new conceptions of power, creates the 
marvels — miracles almost — that fill the 
world of invention from day to da} r ? Who 
supplies the successive races of men that, 
occupying for a brief hour an obscure spot 
upon the merchant's exchanges of Boston, 
New York, Philadelphia, Paris and Lon- 
don, give to the world of finance and pol- 
itics its law ? Does professional society 
reproduce itself? Can inventive spirits 
call up their own successors ? Have the 
mercantile centres of the world ever re- 
produced their own financial giants ? Nev- 
er! The farm supplies all. It is the sale 
of the earth, and if this earth's salt lost 
its savor, wherewith shall the earth be 
salted ? — Maine Farmer. 



Height of Economy. 

Old Deacon Briggs is as remarkable for 
his closeness as Dicken's man Barkis. His 
name has come to be a proverb in our re- 
gion for such an economy as ever makes 
the man the subject of ridicule and con- 
tempt. One bitter cold morning, a few 
falls ago, he bade the boys drive together 
all the pigs that were to be fattened for 
market, into the little yard just at the cor- 
ner of the house. A pig was caught by 
one of the youngsters — the Deacon with a 
pair of pincers in one hand, a sharp knife 
in the other, seized the unfortunate by the 
tail and cut it off close up. So, through 
the whole herd, leaving not a pig with 
even a stump of a tail. Cort, who worked 
for his grandfather, stood by in amaze- 
ment — his hands in his pockets, his body 
wrapped into a crescent by the cold, and 
his teeth jawing against the outrage with 
a prodigious chatter. At last he stuttered 
out : 

"Grandpa! what are you cutting off 
those tails for ?" 

Sober and 
as he replied : 

" You will never be a rich man, for you 
do not know what it is to be savin'. You 
ought to know, my child, that it takes a 
bushel of corn to fatten an inch of tail." — 
Maine Farmer. 



solemn was Deacon Brings, 



'42 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



The Chinese. 

Who are the Chinese? What have they done 
for mankind? Their empire is believed to be 
the most ancient in the world ; and setting aside 
all mythical and marvellous accounts that go 
back into dim and unrecorded ages, good au- 
thorities name Tehee as their first sovereign, 
2247 B. 0. Passing over historic annals, as 
well as geography, ethnology, population, reli- 
gions and philosophies of the Chinese, all well 
known to the world, we take leave to say, that 
many of the arts and manufactures peculiar to 
refined life, are here carried to a very high de- 
gree of perfection, especially in silks, nankeens, 
and other cottons, and a porcelain that is quite 
matchless for its peculiarities. The interroga- 
tory as to what the Chinese have accomplished 
for mankind, may be answered in a manner 
alike favorable and honorable to that people — 
for there can be little doubt that the mariner's 
compass, printing, gunpowder and paper-ma- 
king, and many other useful inventions and 
manufactures have been known to them, pro- 
bably for thousands of years, whereas in Eu- 
rope they were all either adopted or compara- 
tively modern discoveries. 
x The revenue of China is $200,000,000 annu- 

ally, showing her vast resources for wealth — 
while her foreign exports give a yearly average 
of about $40,000,000 in value — soon we hope to 
be largely increased, as well as the imports. 
The trade between the U. States and China in 
1856 footed up : 

$10,454,430 
2,558,220 



Imports into U. S. from China, 
Exports from " " " 



Teas, silks, a few cotton goods, porcelain, 
fire-works, toys, and minor articles, are ship- 
ped from China, while she produces in great 
abundance silk, rice, cotton gold and precious 
stones. Surely, then, great results will follow, 
for a wide field is opened by the breaking dewn 
of the Chinese wall, by which we symbolize 
the abolition of national exclusiveism. And 
if, under her old sytem, she could construct 
that wall, and her grand canal, two of the most 
wonderful of the works of by-gone days, what 
may not be expected from the ingenuity of the 
Celestials, when their prejudices shall be dis- 
pelled by a free interchange of opinion with 
the other nations and people of the earth ? — 
Phila. Enq. 



Hope-Work— Wait. 

It is Hope which inspires to exertion and 
springs to action. Without it but little would 
be attempted and less accomplished. It buoys 
us up in adversity, and impels us forward to 
further achievement if successful. It sustains 
us when all is dark and gloomy, and when, to 
all human appearances, all our exertion is la- 
bor lost. When care and trouble weigh us 
down in the present, it comes and whispers of 



the future, and overcomes the spirit of despon- 
dency. 

Rut without work, — effort — hope is of little 
worth. Sitting still and hoping will accom- 
plish nothing. Hope excites to effort, and when 
attended by it accomplishes wonders. Work 
is lightened and toil is sweetened by the luring 
results promised by Hope. 

Hope and work in union are invincible, and 
before them, under heaven, all opposition will 
be overcome. Inspired by one, and in the un- 
tiring exercise of the other, we may confident- 
ly wait for the sunshine and showers which in- 
sure the harvest. Wait patiently and uncom- 
plainingly, because,. God has promised bless- 
ings to those who but use the means to secure 
them. — Port Tobacco Times. 



Falling- Apples. 

Already the apples, pears and plums are 
beginning to drop abundantly from the 
trees. If you examine these you will dis- 
cover not a single sound specimen among 
them. They have fallen, not by the winds, 
but quite likely, prematurely from disease. 
Cut them open, and you find either eggs 
or grubs already at work upon the sub- 
stance of the fruit. Every one of these 
fruit is a pest-house, to be immediately de- 
stroyed. It is good work for the boys to 
pick them up and throw them into the 
pig-stye, where they will be devoured or 
rot among the fermenting manures. We 
are persuaded that the destruction caused 
by the curculio, and by the grubs that prey 
upon the apples and pears, is caused main- 
ly by fie neglect of this simple precaution. 
The fallen fruit is suffered to lie upon the 
ground and mature its progeny of insects. 
The next year they swarm in increasing 
numbers, and the farmer complains that 
there is something peculiar in his soil and 
climate ; he cannot grow good fruit. The 
difficulty is in the man and not his soil. 
Pick up the fruit. And this reminds us of 
an apple orchard we visited last season. 
The proprietor had been accustomed for 
years to turn in his store pigs, and to keep 
them through the season, until the apples 
were sufficiently mature for making cider. 
Not an apple escaped the pigs from July 
to September. The consequence of this 
policy was, that he had fair, handsome ap- 
ples to sell, while his neighbors were com- 
plaining that their crop was nearly all per- 
forated with worms. Shall the pigs have 
a chance at the fallen fruit ? [Ex. 






THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



743 



REPORTS OF JUDGES 

AND 

AWARDS OF PREMIUMS, 

AT THE 

SIXTH ANNUAL EXHIBITION 

OF THE 

Virginia State Agricultural Society, 

HELD IN 

PETERSBURG, VA., 

ON THE 

2nd, 3rd, Itli, and 5th November, 1858. 

BRANCH I. 

Premiums for Experiments. 

The Judges, on the subject of Experiments, 
regret to have to report that only one paper has 
been handed in — that of Mr. Norveli, of Lunen- 
burg — on the subject of Continuous Cropping. 

While Mr. Norvell's report is an interesting 
one, and on an important subject, yet they do not 
deem his experiment conclusive, not having been 
carried through a sufficient number of years to 
entitle it to a premium under the regulations of 
the Society. 

BRANCH II. 

Premiums for Written Communications. 
Several Essays have been submitted to the 
Committee on this Branch, upon which — for want 
of sufficient time for the due consideration of 
them — no report has been rendered. They with- 
hold to a future time the rendering of a report, 
when their awards will be made known. 

BRANCH III. 

Class 1st. 
Best Crops of Different Farms. 

86. To Wm, D. West, of Elizabeth City, 
for the best product of Sweet Potatoes on 
five acres of land in a body, being an ag- 
gregate yield of 1987^ bushels, produc- 
ing $1,412 86, a premium of , $30 00 

88. To Leonard Chamberlain, of Hen- 
rico, for the best product of Irish Potatoes 
on two acres of land, in a body, yielding 
236 bushels per acre, a premium of 20 00 

Several Bales of Cotton, very neatly put 
up, were exhibited by Messrs. Needham 
Price, John R. Dunn, and Wells Draughan, 
of N. C. 

Class 2nd. 

92. To Tilghman Foster, for the best 
Sample of English Shipping Leaf To- 
bacco, 20 00 

93. To A. S. Clarke, for the second best, 10 00 

BRANCH IV. 

Class 1st. 
Thoroughbred Horses. 
98. To John Minor Botts, for his tho- 



roughbred Stallion, "Revenue," a Certifi- 
cate of Continued Superiority in lieu of 
the first premium, that honor having been 
twice awarded him at previous Exhibi- 
tions of the Society. 

99. To John L. White, for his thorough- 
bred Imported Stallion, " Fly-by-Night," 

as the second best, a premium of $20 00 

100. To T. D. Watson, for his thorough- 
bred horse "Mohegan," a Certificate op Merit. 

101. To Wm. C. Scott, for the best Brood 
Mare, (Pauline,) 20 00 

102. To Paschal Buford, for the second 

best, 10 00 

103. To J. D. Watson, for the third best, 
(Mary,) a Certificate of Merit. 

104. To Wm. O. Goode, for "Phantom," 
the best entire Colt foaled since 1st Janu- 
ary, 1855, 10 00 

106. To O. P. Hare, for the best entire 

Colt foaled since 1st January, 1857, 7 50 

107. To R. N. Neblett, for the best Filly 
foaled since 1st January, 1855, 10 00 

108. To J. Eubank, for the best Filly 
foaled since 1st January. 1856, 10 00 

109. To J. Eubank, for the best Filly 
foaled since 1st January, 1857, 7 50 

Class 2nd. 
Horse of General Utility. 

111. To Philip St. George Cocke, for the 
best Stallion for useful and elegant pur- 
poses combined, " Cleveland," 40 00 

112. To Leonard Mongan, for the second 

best, " Orphan Boy," 20 00 

113. To John C. Griffin, for the third 

best, "Young Madison," a Certificate of Merit. 

1 14. To W. C. Archer, for the best Brood 
Mare, "Molley," 20 00 

115. To J. W. Dyer, for the second best, 
"Sally," 10 00 

116. To G. S. A> re, for the third best, 
"Fannie," Certificate of Merit. 

117. To G. W. Mowry, for the best en- 
tire Colt foaled since 1st Januarv, 1855, 
"Jim Wiley," 10 00 

118. To R. A. Willis, for the best entire 
Colt foaled since 1st January, 1856, 
"Young America," 10 00 

119. To Baker Mann, for the best entire 
Colt foaled since 1st January, 1857, "Ti- 
conderoga," 7 50 

120. To John P. Branch, for the best 
Filly foaled since 1st January, 1855, "Alice 
Wood," 10 00 

121. To J. Eubank, for the best Filly 
foaled since 1st January, 1856, "Ellen 
Carter," 10 00 

122. To W. C. Archer, for the best Filly 
foaled since 1st January, 1857, "Lady of 

the Lake," 7 50 

124. To Isaac Stone, for the best pair 
matched Horses, " Clipper and Jim." 25 00 

125. To John P. Branch, for the second 

best, 10 00 

126. W. P. Cullen, for the best single 
Harness Horse, Mare or Gelding, "Grav 
Eagle," ' 15 00 



'44 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



127. To T. A. Smith, for the second 

best, "Bald Eagle," $10 00 

Class 3rd. 
Quick Draught Horses. 

128. To Norman Dayton, for the best 
Stallion, " Kit Carson," 40 00 

129. To F. Felton, for the second best, 
"Paul Clifford," 20 00 

130. To E. G. Booth, for the third best, 

" Young Sherman," Certificate of Merit. 

131. To A. M. Aiken, for the best Brood 
Mare, "Mary Fairbank," 20 00 

134. To Win. P. Braxton, for the best 
entire Colt foaled since 1st January, 1855, 
"Virginius," 10 00 

135. To W. B. Irby, for the best entire 

Colt foaled since 1st Jan., 1856, "Floyd, 10 00 

136. To C. B. White, for the best entire 
Colt foaled since 1st January, 1857, "Red 
Eagle," 7 50 

138. To J. C. Baugh, for the best Filly 
foaled since 1st January, 1856, "Play- 
Flower," 10 00 

139. To Robert Berry, for the best Filly 
foaled since 1st January, 1857, "Nina," 7 50 

141. To Chas. H. Rhodes, for the best 
pair matched Horses, Certificate of Merit. 

Being debarred from the premium on ac- 
count of having been "run in a regular 
race." 

143. To Mr. Harvie, for the best single 
Harness Horse, Mare or Gelding, "Brown 
Bill," 15 00 

144. To S. C. Ludington, for the second 

best, "Mountain Hare," 10 00 



Class 4th. 
Heavy Draught Horses. 

145. To G. W. Mo wry, for the best Stal- 
lion, "John Bennett," 40 00 

146. To G. W. Ayre, for the second best 

" Jefferson Roan," 20 00 

147. To Wm. B. Sowers, for the third 

best, "Morgan Frederick," Certificate of Merit. 

148. To John M. Davenport, for best 
Brood Mare, (Bay,) 20 00 

149. To John S. Ayre, for the second 

best, "Bay Roane," 10 00 

151. To G. W. Mo wry, for best entire 
Colt foaled since 1st January, 1855, "Jim 
Wiley," debarred from this premium under 
the 6th Standing Rule. See Horse Gen'l 
Utility, No. 117. 

158. To Robert Bowman, for best pair 
Heavy Draught Horses, (Iron Greys,) 20 00 



Class 5th. 
Saddle Horses. 
160. To N. Berkeley, for the best Stal- 
Lion, .*• Telegrapkfiay," 40 00 

166. To John P.Goodwin, for the best 
entire Colt foaled since 1st January, 1855, 
"Ingomar," 10 00 



173. To John Dyson, for the best Sad- 
dle Horse, Mare or Gelding, " John r Bay," $20 00 

174. To A.M. Aikin, for the second best, 
(Grey,") 10 00 

175. To Wm. T. Joynes, for the best 
Pony, 5 00 

Class 6th. 
Mules and Jacks. 

178. To Wm. W. Baugh, for the best 
Jennet, 6 years old, (Mouse Color,) 20 00 

179. To Wm. H. Griffiths, second best, 

6 years old, (Grey,) 10 00 

183. To Thomas R. Cox, for best two 
year old Mule foaled in Virginia, 10 0U 



BRANCH V. 

Class 1st. 
Durham and Hereford Cattle. 

186. To S. C. Ludington, for best Dur- 
ham Bull, three years old and upwards, 
"Degalma," 40 00 

187. To S. C. Ludington, for the second 

best, " Scipio," 20 00 

188. To S. W Ficklin, for the third best, 
"Jonathan," Certificate of Merit. 

189. To S. C. Ludington, for the best 
Cow, " Chance;" 40 00 

190. To S. C. Ludington, for the second 

best, "Red Rose," 20 00 

195. To S. C. Ludington, for the best 
Bull between two and three years old, 
"Triumph," 20 00 

197. To S. C. Ludington, for the best 
Heifer between two and three years old, 
"Bethia," 20 00 

198. To S. W. Ficklin, for the second 

best, "Tulip," 10 00 

199. To S. W. Ficklin, for best Heifer 
between one and two years old, "Butter 
Cup," 20 00 

200. To S. W. Ficklin, for second best, 
"Orba 6th," 10 00 

201. To S. W. Ficklin, for best Calf or 
Heifer, one year old, "Melody," 10 00 

192^. To Thomas Betts, for best Im- 
ported Durham Bull between one and two 
years old, "Langley," 30 00 

1S9^. To Thomas Betts, for best Im- 
ported Cow, three years old and upwards, 
"Susan," 40 00 

197$. To Thomas Betts, for best Im- 
ported Heifer, between two and three 
years old "Matchless," 20 0U 

186$. To Thomas Aston, for best Im- 
ported Hereford Bull, three years old and 
upwards, "Fair Boy," 40 00 

195^. To Thomas Aston, for best Im- 
ported Hereford Bull, between one and 
two years old, "Grand Duke," 20 00 

189|. To Thomas Aston, for best Im- 
ported Hereford Cow, three years old and 
upwards, "Dutchess," 40 0(1 

197 J. To Thomas Aston, for best Im- 
ported Heifer, between two and three 
years old, "Beauty," 20 00 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



745 



20 J £. To Thomas Aston, for best Here- 
ford Calf, one year old, $10 00 



Class 2nd. 
Devon Cattle. 
202. To H. J. Standberg, for the best 
Bull, three years old and upwards, "Nor- 



folk, 



40 00 
20 00 



203. To Silvester Smith, for the second 
best, "Romeo." ' 

204. To Alexander Garrett, for the third 

best, "Herod," Certificate op Merit. 

205. To H. J. Standberg, for the best 
Cow, three years old and upwards, "Ma- 
tilda," 40 00 

206. To Alexander G. Davis, for the 
second best, "Beauty," - 2Q 00 

207. To Martin Goldsborough, for third 

best " Rhoda," Certificate of Merit. 

208. To H. J. Standberg, for the best 
Bull, between two and three years old, 
"Richmond," 30 00 

211. To Alexander G. Davis, for the 
best Bull, between one and two years old, 
" Thorn," 

212. To H. J. Standberg, for the second 
best, "Victor," 

213. To H. J. Standberg, for the best 
Heifer, between two and three years old, 
" Pink," 

214. To H. J. Standberg, for the second 
best, " Cora," 

215. To H. J. Standberg, for the best 
Heifer, between one and two years old^ 
"Dahlia," 

216. To Alexander Garrett, for the 
second best, " Aggy," 

217. To H. J. Standberg, for the best 
Calf or Heifer, one year old, "Beauty," 



Class 3rd. 
Ayrshire and Alderney Cattle. 

218. To David Dunlop, for the best Ayr- 
shire Bull, three years old and upwards, 
"John Bull," 30 00 

219. To M. Goldsborough, for second 

best, " Monmouth," 15 ' 00 

222. To John G. Turpin, for second best 
Alderney Cow, 15 00 

223. To M. Goldsborough, for second 

best Imported Alderney Cow, 15 00 

225. To M. Goldsborough, for second 
best Alderney Bull, between two and three 
years old, 8 00 

227. To John G. Turpin, for the best 
Ayrshire Heifer, between two and three 
years old, 15 00 

218^. To John G. Turpin, for second , 
best Imported Ayrshire Bull, three years 
old and upwards, 15 00 

23I5. To David Dunlop, for best Im- 
ported Ayrshire Calf, between one and 
two years old, 15 00 

233|. To M. Goldsborough, for best Im- 
ported Alderney Calf, 10 00 



20 


00 


10 


00 


20 


00 


10 


00 


20 


00 


10 


00 


10 


00 



Class 4th. 
Grade Cattle. - 

234. To Paschal Buford, for best Cow, 
three years old and upwards, "Mary 
Luck," $30 00 

235. To S. C. Ludington, for second best, 
"Lady Roane," 15 00 

236. To S. C. Ludington, for third best, 
(Brown Cow,) Certificate of Merit. 

237. To S. W. Ficklin, for best Heifer, 
between two and three years old, "Anna," 10 00 

238. To S. W. Ficklin, for the second 

best, "Lizza," 5 00 

239. To S. C. Ludington, for third best, 
(Brown Cow,) Certificate of Merit. 

240. To S. W. Ficklin, for best Heifer, 
between one and two years old, "Hope," 10 00 

241. To S. W. Ficklin, for the second 

best, "Faith." 5 00 

242. To Pascal Buford, for best Heifer, 

one year old, " Polly Ransom," 5 00 

Mr. H. Williams and H. C. Britton ex- 
hibited fine specimens of native Heifers, 
" Mary" and "Fanny ;" and Messrs. S. C. 
Ludington and P. Buford, exhibited fine 
Bull Calves ; for all of wtadch the Com- 
mittee recommended Certificates of Merit. 

Class 5th. 
Dairy Cows. 

243. To H. J. Standberg, for best Cow 
for the Dairy, awarded to "Matilda," but 
debarred by the 6th Standing Rule from 
receiving the premium. 

244. To Paschal Buford, for second best, 
awarded to " Mary Luck," but also debarred 
from receiving the premium by the above 
Rule. 

Class 6th. 
Working Oxen. 

245. To Sam'l C. Ludington, for best 
Yoke of Oxen, over four years old, 30 00 

246. To P. Buford, for second best, 15 00 

247. To Alexander G. Davis, for best 
Yoke of Oxen, under four years old, 30 00 

Class 7th. 
Fat Cattle. 

249. To James Walker, for best pair 

aged Fat Steers, 50 00 

250. To S. C. Ludington, for second best, 30 00 

251. To S. C. Ludington, for best pair 

Fat Steers, under four years old, 50 00 

253. To S. C. Ludington, for best pair 

Fat Cows or Heifers,. 50 00 

254. To Crouse & Irving, for second best, 30 00 

255. To S. C. Ludington, for best Fat 

Cow over four years old, 25 00 

259. To Crouse & Irving, for best single 

Fat Steer, . 25 00 

260. To S.C. Ludington, for second best, 15 00 

Class 8th. 
Fat Hogs. 
262. To Dan'l Dyson, for best Pen of 
Fat Hogs, 10 00 



74G 



THE SOUTHER^ PLANTER. 



Class 1st. 
Fine Wool Sheep. 

264. To S. S. Bradford, for the best Ram, 
Silesian, $20 00 

265. To S. S. Bradford, for 2d best Ram, 
Silesian, 10 00 

266. To Paschal Buford, for 3d best Sax- 
on, Certificate of Merit. 

267. To S. S. Bradford, for best pen of 
Ewes, 3 in number, 20 00 

268. To J. G. Tarpin, for 2d best, 10 00 

269. To S. S. Bradford, for 3d best, 

Certificate of Merit. 

270. To S. S. Bradford, for best pen Ewe 
Lambs 4 in number, 10 00 

271 To S. S. Bradford, for best pen Ram 
Lambs, 10 00 

312. To S. S. Bradford, for best impor- 
ted Merino Ram, 20 00 

313. To S. S. Bradford, for 2d best 10 00 

314. To S. S. Bradford, for best impor- 
imported Merino Ewe, 20 00 

315. To S. S. Bradford, for 2d best, 10 00 



Classes. 3, 4, 5, 6 and 9. 
Middle Wool Sheep. 

276. To M. Goldsborough, best South 
Down Ram, 

277. To M. Goldsborough, 2d best, 

278. To M. Goldsborough for 3d best, 

Certificate of 

279. To M. Goldsborough, for best pen 
of Ewes, 

280. To M. Goldsborough, for 2d best, 

281. To M. Goldsborough for 3d best, 

Certificate of 

282. To M. Goldsborough, for best pen 
of Ewe Lambs. 

283. To M. Goldsborough, for best pen 
of Ram Lambs, 

316. To Thomas Betts, for best impor- 
ted South Down Ram, 

317. To Thomas Betts, for 2d best, 



20 00 
10 00 

Merit. 



20 


00 


10 


00 


Merit. 


10 


00 


10 


00 


20 


00 


10 


00 



Class 6th. 
Middle Wool Grades. 

284. To John R. Woods, best pen Ewes 
South Down Grades, 20 00 

287. To E. Ruffin, Jr., best pen Ewe 
Lambs, 4 in number, 10 00 



Class 7th. 
Long Wools. 

300. To J. W. Ware, for best Cotswold 
Ram, 20 00 

301. To John R. Woods, for 2d best, 10 00 

302. To J. W. Ware, for 3d best, 

Certificate of Merit. 

303. To J. W. Ware, for best pen Ewes, 
(Cotswold) 3 in number, 20 00 

304. To J. W. Ware, for 2d best, 10 00 

305. To J. W. Ware, for third best, 

Certificate of Merit. 



306. To J. W. Ware, for best pen Ram 
Lambs, $10 00 

307. To J. W. Ware, for best pen Ewe 
Lambs, 10 00 



Class 8th. 
Long Wool Grades. 

308. To H. M. Fowlkes, for best pen 
Ewes, 3 in number, 20 00 

309. To John R. Woods, for 2d best, 10 00 

310. To John R. Woods, for 3d best, 

Certificate of Merit. 

311. To H. M. Fowlkes, for best pen of 
Ewe Lambs, 4 in number, 10 00 

328. To J. W. Ware, for best imported 
Cotswold Ram, 20 00 

329. To J. W. Ware, for 2d best, 10 00 

330. To J. W.-Ware, for best imported 
Cotswold Ewe, 20 00 

331. To J. W. Ware, for 2d best, 10 00 



Swine. 

334. To S. W. Ficklin, for best large 
Breed Chester Boar, 3 years old. 

335. To William Turnbull, for 2d best 
Chester, 

336. To S. W. Ficklin, for best Boar, 1 
year old Chester, 

337. To R. M. Poole, for 2d best, 

338. To Thomas Wood for best Breed- 
ing Sow over 2 years old. Chester, 

339. To John R. Woods, for 2d best, 

340. To Peyton Johnston, for best Sow 
under 18 months old, Virginia Grazier, 

341. To Daniel Dyson, for 2d best. Na- 
tive, 

342. To William H. Griffiths, for best 
lot of 9 Chester Pigs, 

343. To John R. Woods, for 2d best 9 
Albemarle and Chester, 

344. To Paschal Buford, for best Boar, 
Small Breed, 2 years old Berkshire, 

345. To Peyton Johnston for 2d best 
Hampshire ''Duke," 

346. To Peyton Johnston, for best Boar 
1 year old, Hampshire "Frank," 

*347. To Daniel Dyson, for 2d best, 
Essex, 

348. To Peyton Johnston, for best Breed- 
ing Sow over 2 years old, Hampshire 
" Princess," 

349. To Lewis G. Simonson, for 2d best 
Essex grade, 

350. To John G. Turpin, for best Sow 
under 18 months old, Suffolk "Sallie," 

351. To John W. Hobbs, for 2d best 
Berkshire grade, 

352. To John G. Turpin, for best lot of 
Berkshire and Essex Pigs, 

353. To Peyton Johnston, for 2d best lot 
of Virginia Grazier Pigs 8 weeks old, 



Additional Premiums on Premium Animals. 

The Committee on Premium Animals 
beg leave to report that they have award- 
ed Certificates of Merit — the additional 



20 


00 


10 


00 


15 


00 


8 


(JO 


20 


00 


10 


00 


15 


00 


8 


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10 


00 


5 


00 


20 


00 


10 


00 


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00 


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20 


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10 


00 


15 


00 


8 


00 


10 00 


5 


00 



TI*K fct U T H R'RiN PL A \ T B R 



747 



Premiums offered by the Society, as fol- 
lows : 

354. To S. C. Ludington, for the best 
Bull of any breed on Exhibition, for his 
Short Horn Bull D' Jalma. 

355. To S. C. Ludington, for the best 
Cow, for Short Horn Cow, Chance 2d. 

356. To John M. Botts, for thorough 
bred Horse Revenue. 

357. To William C. Scott, for his thor- 
ough bred Brood Mare Pauline, by Glen- 
coe. 

358. To J. W. Ware, for his Cotswold 
Ram. 

359. To J. W. Ware, for his Cotswold 
Ewe. 

360. To S. W. Ficklin, for his Chester 
County Boar, Harvey. 

361. To Thos. Wood, of Pennsylvania, 
for his Chester County Sow, Fanny. 

In making the examination and deci- 
sion, the undersigned, S. W. Ficklin, the 
Chairman, retired from the Committee 
when the hogs were examined and deci- 
ded on, as he had some for exhibition, 
and Wm. C. Scott for the same reason re- 
tired, when the Mares were examined 
and decided on. 
[Signed.] 

S. W. FICKLIN. 
W. C. SCOTT, 
ALEX. S. MATHEWS, 
M. GOLDSBOROUGH, 
W. S. WOOD. 



Class 1st. 
Poultry — Chickens 

362. To Master A. Turpin, for best pair 
of Cochin China, i 

363. To Master A. Turpin, for best pair 
of Imperial China, 

364. To Master A. Turpin, for best pair 
of White Dorkings, 

367. To W. Rowlett, for best pair of 
Black Poland, 

369. To Master A. Turpin, for best pair 
of Silver Pheasants, 

372. To W. A. Pearson, for best pair of 
White or Red Game, 

373. To Andrew Boisseau for best pair 
of Brahma Pootra, 

374. To R. M. Poole, for best pair of 
Virginia Game, 

375. To Master A. Turpin, for best pair 
of Black Spanish, 

376. To Master A. Turpin, for best pair 
of Indian Mountain, 

377. To Andrew Boisseau, for best pair 
of Wild Indian Game, 

378. To Andrew Boisseau for best pair 
of Sumatra Game, 

379. To Master A. Turpin, for best pair 
of Ostrich Game, 

381. To W. A. Branch for best pair of 
Sea Bright Bantams, 

382. To Andrew Boisseau for best pair 
of Java Bantams, 



2 


00 


o 


00 


2 


00 


2 


00 


2 


00 


2 


00 


2 


00 


2 


00 


2 


00 


2 


00 


2 


00 


2 


00 


2 


00 


2 


00 


2 


00 



383. To Andrew Boisseau for best pair 

of Great Malay, $2 00 

384. To W. Rowlett. for best pair of Jer- 
sey Blues, 2 00 

Class 2d. 
Turkeys. 

385. To Master A. Turpin, for best pair 

of Common Turkeys, 2 00 

386. To Mrs. J. C. Baagh, for best pair 

of Wild Turkeys, 2 00 

387. To Master A. Turpin, for best pair 

of Crested Turkeys, 2 00 

Class 3rd. 
Geese. 

389. Andrew Boisseau, for best pair of 
Wild Geese, 2 00 

390. To Master A. Turpin, for best pair 

of China Geese, 2 00 

391. To S. Jones Cralle, for best pair of 
Bremen Geese, 2 00 

392. To Master A. Turpin, for best pair 
Poland Geese, 2 00 



Class 4th. 
Ducks. 

394. To Mrs. J. C. Baugh, for best pair 

of White Poland Ducks, 2 00 

395. To Andrew Boisseau, for best pair 

of Muscovy Ducks, 2 00 

397. To Andrew Boisseau, for best pair 
of Common Ducks, 2 00 

Class 5th. 

399. To Andrew Boisseau, for the great- 
est variety of Poultry by one exhibitor, 10 00 

BRANCH VI. 

AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS. 

Class 1st. 
Plows, Cultivators, fyc. 

400. To Uriah Wells, for the best three 

or four horse Plow (Livingston,) 10 00 

401. To Wm. Alston, N. C, for the best 

two horse Plow, No. 23, 8 00 

402. To George Watt for the best single 
Plow, Watt's No. 1, 5 00 

403. To Uriah Wells, for the best shovel 
Plow, 5 00 

404. To E. Whitman, for the best Sub- 
soil Plow, 5 00 

405. To George Watt, for the best new- 
ground Coalter Plow, 5 00 

406. To E. Whitman, for the best Hill- 
side Plow, 5 00 

407. To Wm. Alston, for the best Culti 

vator for corn, 5 00* 

408. To J. R. Wood, for the best Culti- 
vator for Tobacco, 5 00 

409. To Sayre & Remington, for the 

best Cultivator for two horses, 5 00 



748 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



410. To Uriah Wells, for the best wood- 
en-frame Harrow, $ 6 00 

411. To Ramsey, for the best 

iron-frame Harrow, 6 00 

412. To A. P. Routt, for the best Drain 

and furrow Plow, 10 00 

Class 2nd. 
Drills, Broadcast crs, fyc. 

414. To Willoughby & Black, for the 
best Wheat Drill, 20 00 

Class 3rd. 
Wagons, Carts, Harness, fyc. 
421. To P. & J. Van Pett, for the best 
Wagon for farm use, 10 00 

Class 4th. 
Boilers, Clod-crushers, fyc. 

429. To Warren & Billups, for the best 
Smooth Roller, 10 00 

Class 5th. 
Horse Powers, Threshers, Separators, fyc. 

433. To E. Whitman, for the best Sweep 
Horse Power, 25 00 

434. To H. M. Smith, for the second 

best, 10 00 

435. To E. Whitman, for the best Thresh- 
ing Machine, 20 00 

436. To E. Whitman, for the best Ma- 
chine for threshing, cleaning, and separa- 
ting Wheat at one operation, 30 00 

Class 6th. 
Straw and Boot Cutters, Corn Shelters, fyc. 

439. To G. B. Griffin, for best Straw Cut- 
ter for horse power, 10 00 

440. To G. B. Griffin, for best Straw Cut- 
ter for hand power, 5 00 

441. To G. B. Griffin, for best horse 
power Cutter for cutting Corn-stalks for 
fodder, 15 00 

442. To Uriah Wells, for best Corn Skel- 

ler for horse power, 10 00 

443. To Uriah Wells for best Corn Shel- 

ler for hand power, 5 00 

444. To John Moore, for best Grist-mill 

for horse power, 10 00 

445. To W. H. Tappey, for best Saw- 
mill for farm use, 10 00 

447. To E. Whitman, for the best Root 
Cutter, 2 50 

Class 7th. 
Fanning Mills, Hay Press, fyc. 

■119. To J. Montgomery & Brother, for 
the best Fan-mill, Certificate of continued 
superiority in lieu of the lirst Premium be- 
ing debarred by having twice before re- 
ceived the first Premium. 



450. To E. Whitman, for the best Hay 
Press, $15 00 

454. To E. Whitman, for the best steel 
Spade Fork, 2 00 

455. To G. B. Griffin, for best Horse 
Rake, (Pratt's,) 5 00 

456. To G. B. Griffin, for the best 
Gleaner, (Pratt's,) 3 00 

Class 8th. 

458. To E. Whitman, for the most ex- 
tensive and valuable collection of useful 
Machines and Implements, 25 00 

Class 9th. 
Miscellaneous. 

459. To R. Brittingham Mitchell, for the 

best Pump adapted to deep wells, 10 00 

460. To Wm. Bowden, Jr., for the best 
Water Ram in operation, 10 00 

461. To E.Whitman, for the best Scoop 

or Scraper, 10 00 

464. To J. Wm. Vincent, R. J., for the 

best Sausage Cutter, 2 00 

466. To Wheeler & Wilson, for the 

best Sewing Machine, 10 00 

Class 13th. 
Beaping and Mowing 3Iachines. 

477. To C. Aultman & Co., Ohio, for the 

best Reaping Machine, 25 00 

478. To C. Aultman & Co., for the best 
Mowing Machine, 20 00 

BRANCH VI. 

Class 1st. 

Fruits and Fruit Trees. 

480. To Joseph Sinton & Son, for 
largest variety of Apples suitable 
Southern raising, labelled, 

483. To Franklin Davis, for the 
and largest collection of Apple Trees 
able for Southern raising, 

484. To Franklin Davis for the 
Pear Trees, &c, 

485. To Franklin Davis, for the 
Peach Trees, &c, 

487. To Franklin Davis, for the 
Grape Vines, 

48S. To J. Standbury, for the best St 
berry Vines, 

489. To Franklin Davis, for the 
Raspberry Plants, 

490. To D. E. Watkins, for the 
bushel of Dried Apples, 

491. To D. E. Watkins, for the 
bushel of Dried Peaches, 



Class 2nd. 
Flowers. 
493. To James Ayres, of Petersburg, for 
the largest and choicest collection of 
Plants, 10 00 



the 




for 






10 00 


best 




suit- 






10 00 


best 






10 00 


best 






10 0u 


best 






5 00 


raw- 






3 00 


best 






3 00 


best 






3 00 


best 






3 00 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER 



749 



499. To James Ayres, of Petersburg, for 
the best and largest collection of chrysan- 
themums, $3 00 

500. To Mrs. J. B. Varnum, of Peters- 
burg, for the best Floral Ornament, 5 00 

501. To Miss Anna Joynes, of Peters- 
burg, for the best hand Bouquet, 2 00 

503. To Franklin Davis, of Staunton, 
for the best and largest collection of Ever- 
greens, 5 00 

504. To Franklin Davis, of Staunton, 
for the best and largest collection of hardy 
Flowering Shrubs, 5 00 

The Judges also find in this Department an 
Orange Tree, exhibited by Joseph W. Hobb?, of 
Petersburg, in a healthy and flourishing con- 
dition, and exhibiting proofs of skilful and suc- 
cessful culture, for which no premium is offered, 
and which they therefore recommend for a dis- 
cretionary premium of $3. 

Class 3rd. 
Vegetables. 

505. To L. Chamberlain, for the largest 

and best assortment of Vegetables, 10 00 

506. To B. K. White, for the best dozen 

long Blood Beets, „ 2 00 

507. To L Chamberlain, for the best 
dozen heads of Cabbage, 2 00 

510. To L. Chamberlain, for the best 
dozen Carrots, 2 00 

511. To L. Chamberlain, for the best 
dozen Egg Plants, 2 00 

512. To L. Chamberlain, for the best 
peck of Onions, 2 00 

513. To L. Chamberlain, for the best 
dozen Parsnips, 2 00 

514. To L. Peebles, for the best bushel 

of Irish Potatoes, 2 00 

515. To L. G. Simonson, for the best 
bushel of Sweet Potatoes, 2 00 

Mrs. Robert Dunlop exhibited some very fine 
Egg Plants, but not in sufficient quantity to en- 
title her to the premium. 

BRANCH VII. 

Class 1st. 
Butter and Cheese. 

516. To E. Cummings, for the best spe- 
cimen of Fresh Butter, 10 lbs., 10 00 

517. To Mrs. McCaw, of Powhatan, for 

best specimen of 5 lbs., 5 00 

Mrs. E. O. Watkins and Mrs. Barksdale ex- 
hibited fine specimens, but little inferior to 
those for which the premiums were awarded. 

Class 2nd. 
Honey, Bee-Hives, and Bacon Hams. 

521. To B. K. White, for the best speci- 
men of Honey, not less than 10 lbs., 5 00 

522. To A. S. Maddox, for the best Bee- 
Hive, (Phelps' Patent,) 10 00 

523. To Mrs. James Ayres, for the best 
Ham cured by exhibitor, 8 00 



524. To Mrs J. C. Howlett, for Second 
best, $4 00 

Class 1st. 
Household Manufactures. 
525 To Miss Emma R. Seay, for the 
best Bed Quilt, 5 00 

526. To Miss C. R. Turner, for the 
second best, 4 00 

527. To Mrs. Van Pelt, for the best 
Counterpane, 5 00 

528. To Mrs. Win. T. Joynes, for the 
second best, 4 00 

529. To Mrs. W. M. Bush, (Augusta,) 

for the best pair home-made Blankets, 5 00 

530. To Mrs. Win. Gregory, for the best 
home-made Carpet, 5 00 

536. To Mrs. A. A. Rowlett, for the best 

10 yards heavy woolen Jeans, 5 00 

537. To Mrs. Henry Jarratt, for the 
second best, 3 00 

538. To Mrs. R. H. Allen, for the best 7 
yards Linsey, 5 00 

539. To Miss Eliza Trotter, for the 
second best, 3 00 



Class 2nd 
541. To Mrs. J. C. Burton, for the best 
fine long yarn Hose, 3 00 

544. To Mrs. H. A. Morton, for the best 
specimen of home-made wine, 5 00 

545. To Mrs. D. W. Paul for the best 
specimen of home-made Bread, 5 00 

546. To Mrs. Wm. T. Joynes, for the 

best home-made Pound Cake, 3 00 

547. To Mrs. James Ayres, for the best 
home-made Sponge Cake, 3 00 

548. To Mrs. James Ayres, for the best 
home-made Pickles, 3 00 

549. To Mrs. James Ayres, for the best 
home-made Preserves, 3 00 

550. To Mrs. James Ayres, for the best 
variety of home-made Fruit Jelly, 3 00 

551. To Joel Sturdivant, for the best 
home-made Soap, 5 00 

The Committee recommended the award of 
a discretionary Premium to Mrs. H. A. Morton, 
for her successful cultivation of the Cranberry. 

Class 3rd. 

552. To Mrs. Maria Gilliam, and Miss 
A. Du Pre, for best Specimen of Em- 
broidery, 8 00 

553. To Miss Sue Harrison, and Miss S. 

E. Grigg, for second best, 6 00 

556. To Mrs. J. N. Gordon, for best 
Specimen of Crotcheted Work, 8 00 

557. To Miss Maria E. Cook, for second 

best, 6 00 

558. To Mrs. Mary A. Morton, for best 
Specimen of Wax Work, 8 00 

559. To Mrs. James L. Howlett, for 2nd 

best, 6 00 

562. To Mrs. Judith Brown, aged 69, 
and Miss Cecilia Houze, for best Specimen 
of Feather Work, 8 00 



>0 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



563. To Mrs. Howell, (Sussex.) and 

Mrs. M. M. Goodwin, for second best, $6 00 

564. To Mrs. Toole, (Petersburg,) for 

best Specimen of Block Work, 8 00 

565. To Mrs. Stephen Watkins, for 
second best, 6 00 

56«. To Mrs. D'Arcy Paul, and Mrs. 
Mildred Campbell, for best Specimen of 
Knitting, 8 00 

567. To Mrs. Gilliam, (Prince George,) 

for second best, 6 00 

568. To Mrs. P. Woolfolk, and Mrs. J. 

E. Williams, for best Specimen of Netting, 8 00 

569. To Mrs. S. A. T. Clay, (Chester- 
field,) for second best, 6 00 

The Committee recommended in their Report 
the following as worthy of Discretionary Premi- 
ums, but failing to give to the exhibitors the 
necessary Certificate in the form prescribed by 
the Rules of the Society, the subjects were not 
brought to the notice of, nor were they considered 
by that Committee. 

Mrs. Joseph C. Burton, for a skilfully and ele 
gantly made Gentleman's Shirt. 

Miss Sarah W. Paisons, ditto, ditto. 

Miss Susan Maxwell, for a handsome Embroi- 
dered Bonnet. 

Miss A. Harrison, for a beautiful Shawl, made 
by her. 

Miss Mary B. Roberts, of Petersburg, for a 
handsome Bonnet and Flowers, made by her. 

Mrs. A. Cairns, of Petersburg, for a Case of ele- 
gant Mi li nary. 

Mrs. Shakespeare Caldwell, of Cincinnati, for 
a beautiful Specimen of Embroidery, which was 
entered after the Premiums had been awarded. 



Domestic Manufactures. 
Class 1st. 

571. To J. O. Dickinson, for the best 
Flour, made of White Wheat, a 

Certificate of Merit. 

572. To Messrs. Kevan & Brother, for 
the best Flour, made of Red and White 
Wheat mixed, Certificate of Merit. 

Class 2nd. 

573. Gilman, Lyon & Broadnax, for best 
Specimen of Manufactured Tobacco, (Julia 
Carroll brand,) a Certificate of Merit. 

5S7. To Dr. Alfred Whitehead, for Es- 
tablishing and Maintaining in Virginia, 
for six months, in successful operation, a 
Factory for Tubular Draining Tiles, $50 00 

58S. To Dr. Alfred Powell, for best SarA'- 
ple of Tubular Draining Tiles; 5 00 

591. To Augustus H. Drevvry, for the 
best Drained Farm, &c, 50 00 

The Special Committee appointed to examine 
and pass on sundry articles not specified in the 
Premium List, and some of which were not on 
exhibition in lime to be examined by other Com- 
mittees on the first day, submitted the following 
Report : 

To Wm, E. Stewart, (Petersburg,) one set Sin- 
gle and Buggy Harness, first Premium. 



To Wm. E. Stewart, one set Carriage Harness, 
first Premium. 

To Dawson & Wilkins, (Lynchburg.) 1 Ladies' 
Saddle and one Man's Saddle, No. 1 and 2, first 
Premium. 

To T. A. St. Clair, of Petersburg, one Buggy 
exhibited by him, first Premium. 

To John Camp, for superior Carriage, made in 
Petersburg and exhibited by him, first Premium. 

To Spears & Cole, for a lot of Leather, ex- 
hibited by them, first Premium. 

Discretionary Premiums. 
The Committee on Discretionary Premiums 
have awarded the following: 

Thomas Betts, of England, for his Imported 
Short-Horn Cow, " Blush Rose," $40 00 

For his Imported Short-Horn Cow, "Je- 
mima," 20 00 
For his best Imported Hampshire Ram, 20 00 
For second best do., 20 00 
For his best Imported Ram, a cross of 
Southdown and Hampshire, 20 00 
Second best do., 10 00 
Col. Lilly, of Augusta, for his instru- 
ment for Surveying and Calculating Areas, 20 00 
J. W. Hobbs, for his Orange Tree, 3 00 
Samuel C. Ludington, for his two year 
Steer, 20 00 
Paschal Buford, yearling Bull, ' 10 q0 
Theodore Baily, Dumping Wagon, 10 00 
Mrs. A. C. Morton, Asparagus, 2 00 
W. H. Tappey, Tobacco Press, 10 00 
C. Fisher, three year old yellow Mule, 10 00 
E. D. Tannahill, collection of Game 
Chickens, 2 00 

To S. Shell, for collection of Roach 
Traps, 2 00 

Geo. A. Ayres, of Loudoun, a Certificate 
of Merit, an extraordinary yield of Rye 
on 13 acres, 

For Saddle Cloths and Trapping, Miss 
Cogbill, Petersburg, 2 00 

Frame of Raised Embroidery, Mrs. J. 
C. Walsh, of Lynchburg, 2 00 

A worked Piano Cover, Mrs. S. A. Fin- 
ney. 2 00 
Pair of Ottomans, Miss Rowlett, 2 00 
do. Mrs. Jarratt, 2 00 
B. F. Thompson, slaughtered Mutton, 

Certificate of Merit 
Mr. Burton, for Carpet Sweeper, " 

North Chase, improved Self-Ventilating 
Refrigerators. " 

Mr. Burton's Old Dominion Coffee Pot, " 
Wm. H^. Rodgcrson, specimen, of home 
made Starch, " 

Mr. Burton, for his invention of a Car- 
pet Holder, " 

Jabez Smith, for his production Hun- 
garian Grass, " 
T. J. Clarkson. Shingle Machine, 
Bayer & Boyle, for Circular Saw, " I 
John Viles, specimens of Roofing, " 
Mr. Burton, lor his invention of a Milk 
Pan, 

Samuel Sutherland, for collection of 
Guns, " 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



751 



Lundie Ingersoll, for his invention for 
producing Rotary Motion, Certificate of Merit. 

Yardly Taylor, for bis Plan and Descrip- 
tion of a House for Drying Fruit, 

To Paschal Buford, for Basket, 

For want of sufficient time to properly investi- 
gate all of the very many subjects referred to 
the Committee, it is thought not improbable that 
some one may have been overlooked, and this 
explanation is made with the hope of satisfying 
any reasonable person who may have been neg- 
lected. 



From the Lynchburg Virginian. 

Agriculture as a Profession. 

At the present time, when we have so many 
among us who are engaged in agricultural 
pursuits, a few reflections upon Agriculture as 
a profession will not be considered inappropri- 
ate or out of place. Poets have sung of the 
beauties, advantages and pleasures of this glo- 
rious life. Statesmen, alter the turmoil and 
labor of political life, and the contentions of 
the Legislative Hall, have gladly sought repose 
and retirement on the farm. Merchants, when 
the vexations and toils and uncertainties of 
their calling have worn out their health and 
energy, longingly hope to spend the remnant 
of their days in the tillage of the soil. Profes- 
sional men, harassed with their cares and re- 
sponsibilities, and their rough contests with 
their fellow-men, fondly indulge in the same 
expectation — and who have tried it have found 
their fullest expectations realised. 

Agriculture, of course, has its cares and an- 
noyances. Every profession has these to en- 
counter. It is fore-ordained that man must 
live by the sweat of his brow— and industry 
and care and labor are requisite for success in 
every employment. We speak by comparison 
when we say that the culture of the soil com- 
bines more positive pleasures, with fewer disa- 
greeable incidents, than any other calling. In 
the first place, it is the most independent life 
which any man can follow. While the politi- 
cian, and the merchant, and the professional 
man, and the editor must have daily inter- 
course with men,*and must exercise prudence 
and forbearance, and must humor this one, and 
consult the prejudices of the other, and must 
bear w T ith ill-temper, and ignorance, and unrea- 
sonable requirements of those w 7 ith wlfbm they 
have dealings, the Farmer, on the contrary, is 
independent of them all. When his crop is 
ready for the market, he has only to sell at the 
highest price he can get, and here his necessa- 
ry intercourse with all others ends. He may 
pursue the even tenor of his way, regardless of 
the opinions of the world. 

In the next place, it is the most healthful of 
all pursuits. The statistics of mortality prove 
the farmer to be longer-lived, in the general, 
than any other class. While he has principally 



physical labor to perform, other professions 
have mental labors in addition, which harass 
the mind and w r ear down the constitution. — 
Farming, it is true, is a laborious life — but 
this very labor strengthens the frame, conduces 
to health, promotes longevity, and gives zest to 
the planter's life. 

Take it all in all, farming is about as remu- 
nerative as any other profession. Ten mer- 
chants fail in business where one farmer does. 
Professions men rarely grow rich from their 
professional alone, and politicians notoriously 
die poor, unless they accumulate wealth by 
stealing. 

If the farmer, at the end of the year, has 
been able only to " make both ends meet/' he 
has done well — for his property is increasing 
and accumulating all the time. In fact, it is a 
much more profitable business than many of 
those engitged in it are themselves aware of. — 
True, the farmer has to encounter occasionally 
bad seasons and short crops, and low prices — 
but, in the long run, the general average is fa- 
vorable to him. And what he falls short in 
one year, he is very apt to make up in another. 

The farmers and planters of the South, in a 
political point of view, constitute the great con- 
servative class of the country. They are not 
so subject to violent excitement, and are not so 
easily carried away by passion, as the commer- 
cial and manufacturing classes of the large 
cities. Where they are educated and intelli- 
gent, as most of them are, they are averse to 
everything like mob-law r and insubordination. 
"O/fortunatos Ayricolas, si sua bona norint," 
was the exclamation of the Latin poet nearly 
two thousand years ago, and the remark may 
be made with still greater truth at the present 
day. 



Co-Operation of the Wife. 

There is much good sense and truth in 
the remark of a modern author, that no 
man ever prospered in the world without 
the co-operation of his wife. If she 
unites in mutual endeavors, or rewards 
his labor with an endearing smile, with 
what confidence will he resort to his mer- 
chandise or his farm, fly over lands, sail 
upon the seas, meet difficulty or encounter 
danger, if he knows he is not spending 
his strength in vain, but that his labor will 
be rewarded by the sweets of home. 

Valley Farmer. 

To Preserve Cut Flowers. 

Procure a flat dish of porcelain, into which 
pour water sufficient to nearly fill it ; in the 
water place a vase of flowers, and over the 
vase place a bell glass with its rim in the 
water. 



752 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 




THE SOUTHERN PLANTER 



RICHMOND, VIRGINIA. 



Mr. Fitzhugh Catlett is our authorized 
agent (at Guiney's Depot, Caroline County,) to 
receive money for us, and to give receipts. New 
subscribers are requested to leave their names 
with him, daily, if not oftener. 

Mr. Geo. C. Reid is our Agent in Norfolk, 
Virginia. 

F. N. Watkins, Esq'r., at the office of the 
Farmers Bank of Va., at Farmville, is our 
authorized Agent to receive money due for sub- 
scriptions to this paper and to grant receipts 
therefor. Our subscribers in Prince Edward 
and the counties adjacent will please call on 
him. 

Major Philip Williams is our authorized 
agent to receive subscriptions, and give re- 
ceipts for us. See his card in our advertising 
sheet. Our subscribers in Washington City, 
and Georgetown, D. C, will confer a favor on 
us by settling their bills with him. 

August & Williams. 



Perseverance. 

So various are the vicissitudes of life — so 
many the disappointments that await alike 
the sanguine and gloomy — so true is it that 
" man is born, unto trouble'' — so easy is it for 
riches to " make unto themselves wings and 
fly away," that perseverance is not only a 
quality to be admired in the character of a 
man, but it is an essential prerequisite to suc- 
cess in all our undertakings. What a life of 
ennui and satiety we should lead, did we not 
have occasion, more or less frequent, for arous- 
ing all our faculties of both body and mind, 
to overthrow some obstacle in our pathway, 
and to cause us to hope. A life with nothing 
left to hope for, would not be worth the having 
— trackless as the sea, its voyager would have 
no goal ahead — leave no mark behind. 

We should not be contented to fill up our 
whole volume of life with the ever-present 
now, but making sure of the right way, " go 



ahead," leaving behind us a record of indus- 
try, probity, and charity — carrying with us a 
heart full of " good will to men," — hoping for 
the future to abound still more in every good 
work. Alas ! this is easier said than clone. 
We are surrounded by every sort of tempta- 
tion to lead a life of selfishness, and ease, and 
to forget our duty ; but so much the greater is 
the necessity for effort, which, being made, 
brings its reward of renewed vigour to mind 
and body — the ability and strength for still 
greater undertakings, and the enjoyment of 
larger intellectual capacities. 

How often in our every-day experience do 
we see what is and can be effected by perse- 
verance. At school the dull boy who attends 
to his books, and labours to discharge the du- 
ties of his position, attains, and retains, a 
much more respectable rank as a scholar, than 
the " smart fellow" who lacks perseverance, 
and easily succumbs to difficulty. So it is in 
all classes — in every one of man's various pur- 
suits, the steady, persevering, and industrious 
win life's prizes. 

Try again; if failure attends one effort in 
a good cause, make another. A persevering, 
determined " I ivill," has helped many a man 
over difficulties which at first view seemed in- 
surmountable, and can help many others over 
as many more. 

It is as much a duty to work on, even amidst 
great discouragements, as it is natural to hope 
when the present is a disappointment of all our 
brightest anticipations. There is a necessity 
that we should accept the trials, discourage- 
ments, discomforts and disappointments which 
pertain ordinarily to our stations in life — many 
of which seem to us to be the fruit of fortuit- 
ous circumstances, since our places are mark- 
ed out for us by the wisdom of Providence, 
and there is no such thing as chance. 

It remains for us, then, if we would secure 
as mucj| happiness as is presented by the 
things of the world, to keep in view an object 
worthy of pursuit, and to persevere in our ef- 
forts to win success. If it be the acquisition of 
wealth, let it not be for the sake of wealth 
alone : but let the longings of a tender heart, 
keenly alive to human sympathies, and gener- 
ous principles, (not impulses,) point out to us 
the means of employing the wealth acquired 
by the blessing of Providence on our own ef- 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



753 



forts in such manner as to benefit the needy, 
and to carry comfort and succour to the afflict- 
ed and distressed. Every good man will cry, 
God speed to all effort made for such an object 
and so good a cause. But the man who toils 
for money to hoard, or to spend upon himself 
alone, must be pitied, or despised. We know 
not which he most deserves, to be despised 
for his narrowness of mind, and absence of 
soul — or to be pitied for his ignorance of the 
existence of so many sources of true happiness, 
which he has neglected or thrown away in 
failing to attach himself by bonds of compas- 
sion and benefaction to the suffering and needy 
of his race. He is an outsider of the human 
family ; but is no connexion, and can never 
come within the circle of affection which sur- 
rounds the worthy members, and secures jbr 
each the respect and sympathetic cooperation 
of his fellows. 

We must not be discouraged by the pernlex- 
ties and doubts which often surround us, while 
Hirsuing the only path which we think duty 
illows us to follow ; but perseverance in our 
egitimate calling, cheered on by the approv, 
smiles of conscience, we will know no such 
ivord as fear. 

" Tho' clouds hang o'er us, there's a blessing 
Waiting for us, we'll not fear : 

In the right path we're progressing, — 
We'll trust in God and persevere." 

Brother farmers, do we not greatly need 
terseverance in our own profession, at the 
tresent time of disaster to crops and herds ? 
?o our lot it most especially falls to feel the 
ull force of the fiat, " Cursed is the ground 
or thy sake.'' Shall we despair? Nay, 
ather let us redouble our energies, and strive 
3 make good our losses and want of success 
a most of the branches of agricultural indus- 
ry. Let us improve our lands as much as 
ossible. So we shall add to our prospective 

ches, and be laying up a hoard on which we 

lay draw at some future day. 

— _ ■* ■» • » * 

Our Kext Volume. 

With the present Number, our 18th Volume 

; closed, and it is proper that we should at the 

d of the year speak of what we expect to do 

! return for the patronage of our friends, in 

ir next volume. 

We trust that the Southern Planter fills the 

48 



ineasure of expectation of all its friends; nor 
do we intend that any effort on our part shall 
be wanting, to improve its pages constantly, 
and to make it more and more worthy of the 
support of all farmers. 

If we can have their co-operation, we know 
it must improve steadily and rapidly. In this 
connection, let us say to all our brother farmers, 
that they have it in their power to benefit 
themselves as well as us, by sending us as con- 
tributions to our store of facts and theories, 
everything worthy of observation in the circle 
of their own agricultural duties. What inter- 
ests one must be of interest to many others, in 
so large a family; while the constant inter- 
change of opinions through the medium of ag- 
ricultural papers, helps the paper, helps the 
farmer, and the cause in which both editor and 
farmer should bg, deeply interested. We can 
only pledge ourselves then for an earnest and 
faithful performance of our part, in the cause 
of agricultural progress. May we not expect 
to have support of those who are co-workers 
with us in " tilling the soil?" 

We believe it, as it has been said with truth, 
that when a man has done all in Ms power to 
discharge faithfully his own duty, he acquires 
"a right to expect the blessings of Providence 
on his honest industry?" 

We have made arrangements to improve the 
type and paper, and our next volume will pre- 
sent a neater appearance to its friends. This 
much for the outside — may ic prove a tempta- 
tion to many farmers to find themselves in print 
within. 

We shall make every honest effort to increase 
our circulation, and while we regret being too 
modest to ask a man to subscribe to our paper 
when we meet him, still, in the quiet solitude of 
our office, we do not hesitate to make this silent 
appeal to every man who has two dollars unap- 
propriated, to subscribe to the So. Planter. 

We would call the attention of our subscri- 
bers to the fact that our advertising sheet does 
not encroach upon the sixty-four p.ages of read- 
ing matter legitimately belonging to every num. 
ber of the Southern Planter, and that every 
page of advertisement is printed upon an extra 
sheet, which while it costs subscribers nothing, 
is a very material aid to us. 

We make this explanation, in consequence 
of having heard that the enlargement of the 



754 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



Planter, was believed to be by some of our sub- 
scribers, only an increase of its advertising bu- 
siness — the size being doubled by that means. — 
We hope every one laboring under such misap- 
prehension, will now understand the matter. 



The Fairs. 

The U. S. Agricultural Society held its an- 
nual show in Richmond, in connection with 
the Virginia Central Society, October 25th, 
26th, 27th, 28th, 29th and 30th, and the Vir- 
ginia State Agricultural Society united with 
the Union Society in nn exhibition at Peters- 
burg, November 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. 
Many of our Virginia readers, we take it for 
granted, witnessed these exhibitions. If they 
like, as well as we do, to look at fine stock, 
and to scrutinize their " points," we are very 
sure all had a look for themselves who could 
get away from the cares of home. 

The show of Short-horns by Mr. Ludington, 
of Greenbrier, was the best ice ever saw. 
Among them was a white heifer, a perfect 
beauty, which was said by some experienced 
breeders to be the most perfect animal of her 
Class (fat Cattle) they had ever looked at. 
Mr. Betts had some imported Short-horns at 
the Petersburg Fair, which were fine, but were 
not in our opinion equal to Mr. L.'s Kentucky 
heifers, which goes to prove that all England 
can't beat Kentucky "Blue-grass." Indeed, 
without professing to be much of a judge in 
these matters, we can't help believing that we 
have now in the hands of the breeders of the 
United States as fine stock of most kinds, as 
any that can be imported from England or 
elsewhere. The Devons were well represented 
to the herds of Messrs. Strandburg, McIIenry, 
Boivie „& Davis. 

Mr. Aston, of Ohio, had some Herefords 
which were very fine — these being the first 
we believe ever exhibited in Virginia. 

The show of horses was good enough. Fine 
specimens of every class being on the grounds. 

We have seen larger collections of stock 
and machinery on the Richmond Grounds, 
than was present at the Fair of the U. S. Ag'l 
Society ; but the quality of the articles ex- 
hibited was " hard to beat" 

The number of sheep and hogs and cattle 
was greater at the Pct:rsburg show than in 
Richmond, and in this respect was (we think) 



the best exhibition ever made by the State 
Society. 

As to the speeches made, we can say noth- 
ing of them, as we could not get on the 
grounds time enough to hear any of them. 

We had the pleasure of making the acquain- 
tance of some of our Editorial brethren from 
different States who were visitors to our city, 
and regret having missed seeing several others. 
We hope, however, this pleasure is in reversion 
for us. 

We give insertion to the Premium List of 
the Virginia State Society in our present No. 
The Premiums awarded to particular animals 
will call the attention of our readers to them, 
and to the exhibitors' names also. 

We have not space for an extended notice 
of the Fairs, but are glad to say that we have 
assurance of success from all the exhibitions 
held in the State this year. We are glad to 
see it, and from the bottom of our heart we 
say, let 

" Old Virginia never tire/' 

We have been promised engravings of some 
of the sheep exhibited, which, when we get 
them in possession, will be inserted in the 
Planter. 



To Suhscribers in Arrears. 

To every subscriber who shall send us before 
the first day of February next, the amount now 
due us, together with his subscription, we will 
send along with the receipt a sufficient number 
of P. 0. stamps to pay for the postage on the 
volume for 1859. 

We hope they will all avail themselves of 
this offer, as there are so many of them who 
are in arrears, that we shall be greatly bene- 
fitted by their compliance. 



We have the pleasure of adding to our ex- 
change list " The Wisconsin Farmer and North- 
western Cultivator," the acquaintance of whoso 
Editors we had the happiness to make at the 
late Fairs here and in Petersburg. 

We hope they may long live to indulge 
pleasant memories of their brief sojourn in 
the " Old Dominion," and to reap the well- 
earned reward of their Editorial labours, 
which are so favourably represented by their 
neat and richly stored pages. 



THE SOU T H E R N P t A N T E H 



755 






Several " Kossuth" cults took Premiums in 
Petersburg, which no doubt they well merited; 
viz: R. A. Willis' "Young America," W. C. 
Archer's " Lady of the Lake/' W. P. Brax- 
ton's "Virginius." 



Nottoway Club. 

This association of practical farmers is one 
of the most useful auxiliaries in the cause of 
agricultural improvement and progress to be 
found among the many clubs existing in East- 
ern Virginia. They have a standing rule re- 
quiring from each of its members a report upon 
some one or more experiments conducted by 
him, or other .essay of a useful and instructive 
character. 

Some of these reports have been from time 
to time laid before the readers of the Planter, 
and we now have to acknowledge the kindness 
of the secretary in furnishing us with a num- 
ber of the latest of them, w T hich we shall be 
pleased to bring out in our next issue. Mean- 
while, the report of Mr. Win. Irby is publish- 
ed in advance of the rest, because if its sug- 
gestions are followed, as we doubt not to some 
extent they will be, no time need be lost in 
procuring and burying the chestnuts for plant- 
ing in the spring. — [Editor. 

Mr, President: 

As I have been disappointed in perfecting 
the experiment which I intended reporting as 
my annual contribution, I beg leave, in lieu 
thereof, to offer a few suggestions on the expe- 
diency and benefits of rearing chestnuts trees 
on farms deficient in woodland. 

On my own and an adjoining farm there are 
several large chestnuts trees, which, I suppose, 
sprung from the nuts planted. Around these, 
as far off in some instances as a half mile, 
(since the land has been enclosed and thereby 
rendered inaccessible to hogs,) I find there are 
a great many young chestnuts springing up 
among the old field pines, from nuts dropped 
by crows and squirrels, I find these growing 
thriftily on poor land, from which I conclude 
that the tree will grow in our section of country 
on any dry land that will produce old field pine. 
As wood for fuel and timber is already scarce 
on many farms, and must become more and 
more so, it would be wise for the owners of 
such farms to make preparation for a supply 
for future generations. It is true the old field 
pine springs up spontaneously, and grows ra- 
pidly on land thrown out of cultivation, but it 
is very indifferent for fuel and rails, which the 
chestnut is not only admirably adapted for both 



these purposes, but would also be a great acces- 
sion for the mast for hogs. As to the mode of 
rearing I cannot speak from experience, but 
think it would be well to follow the indications 
of nature — i. e. to bury the nuts slightly in the 
fall of the year, and before they germinate in 
the spring plant them, or they might be plant- 
ed in the fall where it is designed for them to 
grow, or a nursery might be made, as I find 
they will bear transplanting. A very decided 
advantage which this tree has over the old field 
pine is, that when cut down, the sprouts spring 
up very soon from the stump and grow very ra- 
pidly, which would afford a continued supply 
of timber on the same land. I am persuaded 
from my observations that it would not be diffi- 
cult to have a large portion of our poor land 
well set in chestnut, which certainly would ren- 
der it much more valuable than it is, in its 
present condition. 

Respectfully submitted. 

WM. IRBY. 

P. S. — Although foreign to the subject of the 
above report, I will state that I am convinced 
from my present year's experience that a cov- 
ering of wheat straw on high land plant patch- 
es is superior to brush. The patch should be 
covered thick enough to hide the ground, and 
if found too thick in the spring, a portion of 
the straw may read:ly be removed with a ma- 
nure fork. I will also state that I think if our 
plant patches were thickly surrounded by pine 
bushes, they would be in a great measure, if 
not entirely, protected from the ravages of the 
fly. W. I. 

August 13, 1857. 



To Subscribers. 

In consequence of the change in the Propri- 
etorship of the " Southern Planter," it is very 
important that our subscribers should remit 
the amount of their indebtedness with as little 
delay as possible. 

The amount due from each subscriber is in 
itself comparatively trifling, but in the aggre- 
gate it makes up a very large sum, and if each 
subscriber will consider this as a direct appeal 
to himself, and promptly remit the amount of 
his bill, it will be of infinite service to us. 

We commence sending with this number the 
bill to each subscriber who is in arrear, and 
shall continue to do so until all shall have been 
sent out. We ask, as a favor, a prompt re- 
sponse from all. 

The bills are made up to 1st January next. 
The fractional part of a dollar can be remitted 
in postage stamps, or the change returned in 
the same. August & Williams. 



756 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



To Postmasters and Others. 

We are satisfied, that with proper exertion, 
any person who will interest himself for us, 
will be able to make up a list of new subscri- 
bers for the "Planter," in almost any neigh- 
borhood, in this or any other of the Southern 
States. We offer, as an inducement to those 
who are disposed to aid and encourage us in our 
efforts to extend the circulation of this paper, 
the following premiums in addition to our 
hitherto published terms: 
To any person who will send us clubs of 

3 new subscribers and $6, — 

The So. Planter for 1857. 

G new subscribers and $12, — 

The So. Planter for 1857 and '58. 

9 new subscribers and $18, — 

The So. Planter for 1857, '58 and '59, 

15 new subscribers aud $30, — 

The So. Planter for 1857, '58 and '59, 
and a copy of the Southern Literary Messenger 
for one year. 

To single new subscribers we will send the 
present volume, (commencing with the number 
for January, 1858,) at the low price of $1 50, 
paid in advance. 

We call upon every one interested in promo- 
ting the progress and improvement of agricul- 
ture, to lend us his aid in contributions of 
original articles on practical or scientific agri- 
culture, in order that our paper may continue 
to be worthy of the confidence and support of 
those who have hitherto so liberally sustained 
it, and to whose interests its pages will con- 
tinue to be zealously devoted. 

August & Williams. 



For the Southern Planter. 
Hog Killing and Making Bacon. 

Mr. Editor, — Your method of killing hogs 
and making bacon, is a very good one. I think 
so because it is very similar to one I success- 
fully practice. But I would earnestly protest 
against making one of our great occasions, a 
mere afternoon piece of work. In this region 
we regard " hog killing" as a jubilee, second 
only to Christmas. 

Having gotten every thing in perfect readi- 
ness over night, the hands turn in at an earlier 
hour than usual, to be called at 2 A. M. if fair 
— if not, the next fair day. At the appointed 
hour, the overseer, the foreman, or the judge of 
the weather, repairs to the killing ground, and 
if the sky indicates a favourable day, with a 
loud halloo applies the torch, which speedily 
brings all hands to the ground and the pile to 
a glorious big blaze. 'Tis an honour to stick 
the first hog, and a reproach if the half pen is 
not swung by breakfast ; you then have time to 
wind up the whole brsiness, and your hogs are 
in nice condition to handle if the heavens are 



threatening, if clear they are suffered to hang 
all night out of doors. My bacon, although in- 
variably excellent, was never so good as last 
year, w en I was induced by my overseer to 
drop each ham, for five minutes, in a strong red 
pepper tea before rubbing with salt. I find 
that it is a popular idea in a portion of this 
county, that a hog should have little or no wa- 
ter alter being put in the fattening pen, my 
experience is contrarywise. 

I give them a liberal supply of pure fresh 
water. I have a gambrel, which is a great con- 
venience to one who tins much butchering to 
do, or who spays his shoats in the belly. It is 
a simple stick of wood of any size and length 
— say 2 feet long, and 2 inches in diameter, 
with 2 holes in each end, 2 inches apart. Thus, 




with a rope passing through holes 2 and 3 and 
returned through holes 1 and 4 and knotted, 
the hind feet are inserted in loops a a which 
tighten when the animal is suspended on pin 
b. I first saw this simple thing used by a ne- 
gro in Caroline county. 

I have a better contrivance for swinging a 
beef, and just as simple; it consists of 3 stout 
poles, 13 feet long, connected just as the three 
legs of the sheers for hoisting threshing ma- 
chines. When you are ready to hoist your 
beef, stretch your tripod on the ground in the 
shape of a Y, the outside legs on either side of 
the animal ; pass the ends of the gambrel, 
(which is a plain stick, passed through the 
hind legs in the usual way) over 2 stout pins 
inserted in the outside legs of the tripod, and 
with a man to each leg hoist away. After 




THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



757 



raising a few feet from the ground, one man 
can manage it — provided the feet of the tripod 
are sharp and take good hold in the ground. 
There should be a number of holes in the out- 
side legs A and C — that the pins may be rais- 
ed or lowered according to the size of the ani- 
mal. A stout pin o, 2 feet long, inserted in leg 
B, will assist in hoisting. Any negro can 
make it of 3 stout fence rails, and pack it on 
his shoulder to any spot you may select to kill. 
Yours, Loudoun. 



For the Planter. 

Action of Lime. 
Mr. Editor : 

Before giving you the results of my experi- 
ments in regard to the action of Lime, (and 
which I shall always take pleasure in doing,) 
I must guard you against placing any confi- 
dence in them, in view of the title with which 
I have been complimented. My only claim to 
the distinction referred to, should be credited 
to the kind feelings of an old and much valued 
friend. 

Some years since, I made an application of 
30 bushels of Lime to a measured acre of land, 
by the way of experiment. This acre was 
similar in quality and character to the rest of 
the field, the whole being what is termed a 
clay soil. The field was put in corn ana" fol- 
lowed by oats and wheat, but no beneficial ef- 
fect was discernable upon either of these crops. 
Indeed the effect seemed to be rather injurious 
than otherwise ; and the same remark may 
be extended to the three years it remained in 
grass. When put in corn again, however, this 
acre could be readily distinguished by the 
greater luxuriance of the growth, and this 
superiority was maintained throughout the 
season. This singular and unlooked fur re- 
sult, after a lapse of six years, led me to in- 
stitute a series of experiments to ascertain the 
precise mode of action of Lime. With this 
view seeds of wheat, and of other plants, 
were germinated upon cotton in glasses of 
water, — and when of sufficient size, were 
transferred, half of them, to glasses contain- 
ing pure water, the other half to glasses con- 
taining water in which Lime in its different 
forms had been dissolved. From these experi- 
ments, it appeared that Lime in any other form 
than that of a neutral salt, rather retarded than 
promoted the growth of plants. This result 
seemed to account for the uniformly beneficial 
effect of Lime in those countries where it ex- 
ists as a natural ingredient of the soil, and the 
question now presented itself, why should its 
action be so different upon clay and sandy 
soils when artificially applied? 

While reflecting upon the subject, it oc- 
curred to me, that the difference might safely 
be referred, in the first place, to the entire 
change of properties occasioned by the process 
of burning; old combinations being thus bro- 



ken up, and new affinities evolved. And in 
the second place, to the opposite chemical re- 
lations of these soils inviting a favourable di- 
rection of these new affinities. Thus, clay is 
known to exhibit a slight alkaline reaction, % 
and hence it may be reasonably inferred, that 
in these soils new affinities of the Lime will be 
expended entirely upon the decomposing or- 
ganic remains; and so long as this process coxi- 
tinues, there must necessarily be a conflict be- 
tween the vital powers of the plant, and the 
chemical action of Lime, both contending for 
the same element — carbonic acid ; nor will this 
contest cease until the Lime has returned back 
to its natural, or original state, — that of a 
neutral salt. In the instance which ha? been 
mentioned of the application of 30 bushels to 
j an acre of clay soil, it would seem to be a fair 
! inference that the unfavourable direction of the 
new affinities continued for a period of sixyears. 

On the other hand, silex, which is the base 
of sandy soils, exhibits an acid reaction, 
and hence it may be supposed that in 
these soils the new affinities will be, to a 
considerable extent at least, diverted from the 
organic matters, and invited to the silex or 
silica acid, — thus forming a salt of lime which 
is perhaps more generally useful than any 
other. Of this fact, the old walls of buildings 
furnish a striking illustration.* 

Influenced by the foregoing views, it has 
been my practice to sow Lime upon the wheat 
field at the rate of six or eight bushels only 
per acre, the aim being to secure what I term 
its physiological in contradistinction to its 
chemical action, and I am satisfied it is the 
best mode on soils of which the predominant 
ingredient is clay. Thus applied, the effect is 
generally soon visibly in the improved colour 
of the plants, and a 'permanently healthful 
green will always insure a yield commensurate 
with the fertility of the land. The remote ef- 
fects are recognized in the gradual diminution 
of the sorrel and running brier, and a corres- 
ponding increase of the clover family. 

Becoming infected with the guano fever, my 
experiments were suspended, much now to 
my regret. They have, however, been again 
resumed, and at a future time I may perhaps 
be able to report progress. 

In regard to sandy soils, my endeavour 
would be to secure both its physiological and 
chemical action, and for this purpose, should 
think the application of fifteen or twenty 
bushels per acre would be an ample dressing 
for a rotation of five or six years. It is well 
known that plants can take up nothing except 
in the form of solution, and we have abundant 
evidence going to show, that the effects of fifty 
or one hundred bushels of Lime applied to an 



* Such, at least, seems to be the conclusion de- 
ducible from the admitted chemical data in- 
volved. 



758 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



acre of land have been distinctly visible for an 
equal number of years. Hence it would ap- 
pear that the quantity of rain which falls upon 
an acre of land annually, is not adequate to 
» dissolve more than a bushel or two of this sub- 
stance. If more were dissolved, plants would 
certainly take up a larger quantity, and the 
effects would necessarily be less permanent. 

I have thus indicated the general principles 
wHich have guided me in the use of Lime, and 
if they shall contribute in any degree to your 
benefit, I shall be truly gratified. 

Very truly 3 r our friend. 

Ingleside, Goochland, April 13th, 1858. 

We are indebted to the courtesy of Mr. F. 
G. Ruffin, the former Editor of this paper, 
for the communication above, which would 
have appeared earlier in our columns, but for 
the fact of its having been accidentally over- 
looked. — Editor. 



CIRCULAR. 

Black Rock, N. Y., Sept. 1858. 
Editor Southern Planter : 

Dear Sir — The approbation with which the 
previous volumes of the American Herd-Book 
have been received by the Short Horn breeders 
of this country, together with the large contri- 
bution of pedigrees to their pages, and the so- 
licitations of many breeders to have a fourth 
volume in preparation, have induced me to 
give this notice, that sufficient time may be 
given for the full examination which is required 
by every Short Horn breeder to properly ar- 
range their pedigrees. Since the compilation 
of the last volume, hundreds of young animals 
have been produced, ana new importations 
made from abroad; and by the time the nest 
volume can be ready for the press, a further 
natural increase to our existing herds will be 
added. I therefore give you this notice, that 
in case you choose to record your pedigrees, 
you can have ample time to do so. I ask your 
attention to the following particulars: 

1st. — All pedigrees must be sent in previous 
to the first day of December, 1858, to allow me 
time to compile them, and issue the book by 
May 1, 1859. 

2d. — Every pedigree must be made out at 
full length, after the manner of those in the 
volumes of the American Herd Book, as I can 
not encounter the labor and responsibility of 
making out full pedigrees from short notes, 
hints and memorandums. The imperfect con- 
dition of many private records required me to 
do that labor for my previous volumes, which 
it is now unnecessary to repeat, with such ex- 
tensive authorities as those volumes before you 
will afford. I can not, therefore, accept such 
imperfect papers, only in cases where your ani- 
mals or thoir ancestors have not been previous- 
ly recorded, either in the English or American 



Herd-books. Another reason for this is, that 
every breeder ought to be supposed to under- 
stand the lineage of his stock better than a 
stranger, and consequently he can give their 
pedigrees with greater accuracy. 

3d. — Let every individual pedigree be com- 
plete in itself, like those in the published Herd 
Books. State by whom the animal was bred, 
(if you wish that fact known ;) the date (by 
month and year) of its birth ; the name and 
Post Office, (County and State:) residence of 
its present owner; its sex, (this may merely 
say " Bull" or " Cow," in parentheses, by the 
side of the animal's name ;) the color, whether 
white, red, red and white, red roan, light roan, 
or roan, simply, without qualification. In 
roans, where white is the prevailing color, they 
are light roans ; where red prevails over the 
white, they are red roans. By referring to the 
past volumes of the Herd-book, you cannofc 
mistake the mode of description, or the tabling 
the produce of the cows. Do not send mo 
printed pedigrees from newspapers, hand-bills, 
or catalogues, &c, unless they are in Herd- 
book form, and complete ; nor when they are 
printed on both sides of the paper, as, if so, 
they must be copied by me for the printers. 
The names of bulls occurring as sires in the 
pedigrees, may be referred to by their numbers, 
when recorded in the Herd-books, either Eng- 
lish or American. When such bulls are not 
recorded, let their pedigrees be written and re- 
ferred to distinctly under the pedigree to which 
he is a party. Any unrecorded and unnum- 
bered bull referred to in a pedigree must also 
be numbered and recorded to properly eluci- 
date such pedigree, and a charge of fifty cents 
will be made for such bull or bulls. In cases 
where uncommon labor is necessary for me to 
find out the pedigree, an additional charge of 
fifty cents to a dollar each will be made, of 
which the owner of the animal will be notified 
at the time. 

4th. — Every animal presented for record 
must be well-bred ; and where evidence of the 
fact cannot be traced to animals recorded in an 
in existing Herd-Book, documentary evidence 
must be furnished to sustain the fact that they 
are true Short Horns, and are descended from 
well authenticated Herd-Book animals. 

5th.— Fifty cents will be charged for each 
animal recorded in a distinct pedigree by 
name, excepting the animals named in the 
tables of produce of recorded cows. The re- 
cord fee, in current money at }'our place, to be 
remitted when the pedigrees are sent to me. 
In all cases where a pedigree, for insufficiency, 
cannot be recorded, such pedigree will be sent 
bad; if requested, and the fee returned. 

6th. — In making out your pedigrees, write 

only on one side of the paper. Write legibly, 

and with perfect distinctness, n\\ proper names, 

as without such writing many names can only 

! be guessed at, and important mistakes may 

| occur. Let your lines be quite half an inch; 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



759 



apart, and between each pedigree let there be 
a space of at least two inches blank paper. 
When pedigrees are written on both sides of the 
paper, they will be immediately returned, as one 
of them must, in all cases, be copied in order 
to print them. 

7th. — If any extraordinary quality of milk- 
ing, in accurate weights or measures, and 
times, belong to your cows, or of dead weights 
of carcases in slaughtered recorded animals, 
have been made, they may be noticed ; as we 
claim that the Short Horns are the greatest 
milkers, and the heaviest beef, of any neat 
cattle whatever, and such instances carry proof 
of these facts to the public. 

8th. — If there have been any errors or omis- 
sions in the pedigrees of your animals already 
recorded, by my fault, please correct them and 
send them to me, and I will rectify them in 
proper order in the fourth volume, by name 
and reference, without charge. 

9th. — I will print any number of well-drawn, 
accurate portraits of animals, fur the fourth 
volume, at five dollars each for the whole edition 
of the book; the portraits and cuts to be fur- 
nished by the owners. This will be done on 
the best of fine tinted paper. I can not print 
portraits without charge, as the expense is too 
heavy an outlay for me, and the main benefit 
accrues to the proprietors of such animals. 
In this relation, I am authorized, by Mr. John 
R. Page, a good artist, whose address is Sennett, 
Cayuga Co., N. Y., to state that he will proceed 
to take such portraits, whenever a sufficient 
number can befurnished to justify it, and that he 
will superintend the engraving of them by 
competent workmen. Many portraits in the 
second and third volumes are samples of his 
execution. All persons who contemplategiving 
portraits of their cattle, should lose no time in 
obtaining them at once, that there may be am- 
ple time to have them properly engraved. 

10th. — The price of the book to contributors 
and subscribers, will be the same as the last — 
five dollars a copy — payable on ordering it for 
delivery. The work to be the same in style and 
material as the third volume. 

11th. — If you have sold unrecorded animals 
to any breeders whose names are not in the 
third volume, I will thank you to send me their 
names, that I may send them a copy of this 
circular, as it is of advantage to you to let ani- 
mals of your breeding, now in other hands, be 
recorded and known to the public. 

12th. — I suggest that even in cases where 
you record by name the produce of your cows, 
it is still better to give all such produce a dis- 
tinct record of their own. They become thus 
more conspicuous, as such produce merely re 
corded with the cow is not much looked after 
by inquirers, — the chief advantage in the pro- 
duce tables being to show that the cow, whose 
progeny is so recorded, is a successful breeder. 
This separate record will add an item to the 
expense, but it is a trifle compared with the 



value of an animal worth from one hundred to 
five hundred or a thousand dollars. Address 
me at Black Rock, N. Y. 

Respectfully yours, 

LEWIS F. ALLEN, 
Editor American Herd Book. 



Uses of a Dead Horse. 

Firstly, we have the hair, which may weigh 
about 1^ lbs., and which sells for 8d. to Is. 
Horse-hair, we know, is applied to many pur- 
poses ; it is made into hair-cloth for seatings, 
colored hair damasks, bags for crushing seed 
for the use of the oil-crusher, cider-makers and 
^others. A consumption of 800 tons of horse- 
hair a year, of home and foreign production, 
valued at about £80,000, shows the value of 
this one item. 

Next we have the hide, weighing — say 30 
lbs., and worth possibly 8s., for converting, 
when split, into the finest Cordova leather ; or, 
in its full thickness, for covering the large 
board-room tables of officers, &c. 

The tendons weigh probably 6 lbs., and are 
converted, like other animal tissues, into fine 
glue, or gelatine. 

The flesh will weigh about 224 lbs. boiled, 
and may be used as meat for men, dogs, poul- 
try, &o. 

Smile not, gentle reader, at the banquet of- 
fered — of viands which are just now in high 
repute on the continent. A society of econo- 
mists, naturalists and hardy gourmands in 
Paris, aim at the introduction of horse-flesh in 
the category of butcher's meat. They set the 
example themselves, and the example is spread- 
ing. It is argued that the horse ought to con- 
tribute to the nourishment of the human race, 
as well as the ox, the sheep, and the pig. 
That it does so already in our own metropolis 
to a great extent, in the shape of nominal 
smoked "ox-tongues" from Russia, and chop- 
ped so-called "beef" sausage meat in West- 
minster, Whitechapel, and other suburban lo- 
calities. But the penchant for roast and boiled 
horse-flesh has found adherents even here, and 
our esteemed contemporary, the "Journal of 
Agriculture," of Edinburgh, has come out 
strong in a recent number in its favor. 

M. St. Hilaire, the champion of this new- 
addition to our food resources, reasons in this 
fashion : 

"Horse-flesh has long been regarded as of a 
sweetish, disagreeable taste, very tough, and 
not to be ea en without difficulty. So many 
different facts are opposed to this prejudice, 
that it is impossible not to recognise its slight 
foundation. The free or wild horse is hunted 
asgame in all parts of the world where it 
exists — Asia, Africa and America — and for- 
merly, and perhaps even now, in Europe. The 
domestic horse, itself is made use of as alimen- 
tary as well as auxiliary — in some cases alto- 



7G0 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



gether alimentary — in Africa, America, Asia, 
and some parts of Europe. 

"Its flesh is relished by people the most 
different in their manner of life, and of race the 
most diverse — negro, Mongol, Malay, Ameri- 
can, Caucasian. It was much esteemed up 
to the eighteenth century among the ances- 
tors of some of the greatest nations of wes- 
tern Europe, who had it in general use, and 
gave it up with regret. Soldiers to whom it 
had been served out, and people in towns who 
have bought it in markets, have frequently 
taken it fur beef. Still more often, and indeed 
habitually, it has been sold in resturants, even 
in the best, as venison, and without the cus- 
tomers even suspecting the fraud or complain- 
ing of it. 

" And further, if horse-flesh has been often 
accepted as good under a false name,* it has 
also been pronounced good by those who, to 
judge of its qualities, have submitted it to 
careful experiment, and by all who have tasted 
it in proper condition — that it is, when taken 
from a sound and rested horse, and kept 
sufficiently long. It is then excellent roasted; 
and if it be not so acceptable as bouilli, it is 
precisely because it furnishes one of the best 
soups — perhaps the best that is known. It is 
good also, as experiments prove, made by my- 
self, as well as others, when taken from old 
horses, not fattened, whose age was six- 
teen, nineteen, twenty, and even twenty-three 
years — animals thought to be worth no more 
than a few francs beyond the value of their 
skin. This is a capital fact, since it shows the 
possibility of utilizing a second time, for their 
flesh, horses which have already been utilized 
up to old age for the strength; and consequently, 
of obtaining a further and almost gratuitous 
profit at the end of their life, after they had 
well nigh paid the cost of their rearing and 
keep by their labor." 

So much for the great champion of horse- 
flesh. 

Having disposed of the flesh, we come next to 
the blood, heart and tongue, weighing about 60 
lbs. The former is used, like the blood of other 
animals, as a decolorizer, for manure, and for 
making, with other animal substances, the well 
known salt, prussiate potash. The disposal of 
the heart and tongue we will say nothing about, 
as there is somewhat of a mystery resting 
upon their appropriation. 

The intestines of the horse, weighing about 
80 Lbs., are converted to several uses. When 
cleaned, they serve for covering bolonies and 
sausages ; or they are twisted into bands or 
strings for bowing cotton, or for other purposes. 

There is seldom much fat to bo got from the 
horse: probably about 20 lbs. may lie ob- 
tained ; and this is used, after being distilled, 
for lamps. We import horse grease largely 
from the River Plate, but we get better at 
home. The grease is also worked up by the 
soap and candle-makers in common with other 



fats, while the entrails and remnants are given 
to hogs, to make food for home consumption — 
at least this is so in the United States, where 
the porcine race are less daintily fed than our 
own store-fed pigs. 

The bones come next; and these weigh, say 
about 100 lbs., and are sold at the rate of 4s. 
Gd. per cwt., either to convert into knife- 
handles, or for making phosphorus, and super- 
phosphate of lime. They will not do for ani- 
mal charcoal, because horses being usually 
killed when aged, the bones contain too great 
a proportion of phosphate of lime, and too 
little animal matter. Ground into dust, or 
crushed into half-inch bone, they make excel- 
lent manure; while other special manures for 
turnips, &c, are made from the blood, flesh 
and bones combined. 

The Kensington Museum catalogue, com- 
piled by Mr. P. L. Simmonds, lets us into the 
secret of cleaning the bones and divesting 
them of putrid flesh, &c., so as fit to them fbt use 
in manufactures. To take off the flesh by 
hand is a tedious and difficult operation. An 
ingenious Frenchman solved the difficulty. 
lie noticed that rats were very fond of horse 
flesh ; so are fowls — other arguments in favor 
of M. St. Hilaire's reasoning of the wholesome- 
ness of the food. Our Frenchman advised the 
authorities to colonize the dead horse-pound 
with rats. This common pound is an enclosed 
area of about ten acres, surrounded by a stone 
wall, to which all carcases, &c, are taken, and 
among the rest the 400 horses which die or are 
killed in a week in Paris. The catacombs fur- 
nished rats by thousands ; and now a dead horse 
put in over night is picked beautifully clean by 
morning, and the bones are ready for the bone- 
dealer. A grand battle is periodically made, 
to keep under the rats, and they are utilized 
by making the skins into gloves, and possibly 
their flesh into ragouts or pies. We have 
nearly done with the economic uses ef the 
worn-out hack; there remain but his pedal ex- 
tremities to deal with. The hoofs, weighing 
about 8 lbs., are worth 8s. to 10s. per cwt. for 
gelatine, or for making prussiates. They are 
not adapted to pressing into the so-called horn 
buttons, which are made of ox-hoofs, but pos- 
sibly may turn up in the shape of a snuff-box, 
capped with silver. The shoes will work up 
into shoes again, or sell for old iron ; and the 
nails are much esteemed for making gun bar- 
rels. 

We have now used up our " old horse," and 
this is merely the example of many other ani- 
mals whose carcases are turned or might be 
turned to various useful purposes. Such a his- 
tory points a moral that nothing should be 
despised, for out of many waste substances 
money is to be made, and the large profits of 
scavengers, knuckers, and the dust contractor, 
are evidences of the utilization of offal and 
sweepings. — Lecture of Dr. Playfair on Refuse 
Animal Matter. 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER 



761 



Premium Farm. 

We have already stated that Mr. Robert 
J. Swan, of Rose Hill, near Geneva, New 
York, received the first premium of the 
New Yoik State Agricultural Society, at 
its last meeting, for the best cultivated 
grain farm. When the Report of the Vis- 
iting Committee appeals, we shall proba- 
bly, for the benefit of our readers, present 
some of its facts in our columns. We 
have several times visited this farm, both 
before and since it came into the posses 
sion of Mr. Swan. We had the pleasure 
of going over it last season, while the hay 
crop was being gathered, and just before 
the splendid wheat crop was harvested, — 
some notes of our visit being published in 
our issue for August 1st, last. But we see 
by the May No. of the Genesee Farmer, 
that the editor of that paper had lately 
visited Mr. Swan's farm, and he gives an 
interesting account of what he saw there. 
He mentions a striking fact in regard to 
Mr. S.'s improvement in wheat-culture, 
which we do not remember to have noticed 
ourselves, viz : that the wheat crop the 
year of his purchase of the farm, 1851, 
only averaged five bushels to the acre. — 
Mr. S. underdrained and summer-fallowed 
six acres that year, which was all that he 
put to wheat, and it yielded over thirty- 
three bushels to the acre — more in the ag- 
gregate than he obtained from forty acres 
the previous year. 

Mr. Swan saw that drainage was the 
first requisite — the soil being mostly .a 
pretty compact loam, baking hard under 
drouth — and he laid, the first year, 16,000 
tiles, and has gone on till in the language 
of our contemporary, "there is not a wet 
spot on the farm," and that there are now 
over sixty -one miles of underdrains, on the 
344 acres comprising the estate, or an av- 
erage of sixty-three rods to the acre. 

We wish to call particular attention to 
the cost of Mr. Swan's drains, because 
when the subject of drainage was under 
discussion at one of the agricultural meet- 
ings at the State House, last winter, most 
of the speakers estimated the expense at 
from fifty to seventy-five cents a rod— the 
latter being the least cost of some drains 
of three and a half to four feet deep, some 
of them having cost considerably more. — 
We took occasion to state at the same 
meeting, that, as this heavy expense might 



be considered a great obstacle to drainage, 
it was proper to mention the fact, that 
drainage had been done effectually at a 
much cheaper rate — even in some instan- 
ces as low as twenty-eight cents a rod. — 
We alluded to Mr. Swan's operations, but 
spoke only from memory. Our cotempo- 
rary before mentioned states, that the av- 
erage cost of Mr. Swan's drainage has 
been twenty-eight and a half cents per 
rod, and that the cost per acre was about 
$19; that on the higher and wetter por- 
tions of the farm the drains are twenty- 
seven feet apart, and from two and a half 
to three feet deep ; that they were dug by 
contract at twelve and a half cents a rod; 
that the cost of laying the tiles and filling 
the drains with ploughs was three cents 
per rod ; the average cost of tiles and car- 
tage, thirteen cents per rod. 

As before remarked, the nature of the 
soil of this farm was such that drainage 
was necessary in the outset, and the re- 
sult has been entirely satisfactory. But our 
contemporary well remarks, that " While 
underdraining has formed the basis of Mr. 
Swan's improvements, it would be erro- 
neous to ascribe his splendid crops to un- 
derdraining alone. The land is thorough- 
ly cultivated by means of summer-fallows 
and hoed crops. It is not over-cropped 
with cereals ; clover is sown with an un- 
sparing hand ; about nine tons of plaster 
are sown each year on the pastures and 
meadows; nearly everything is consumed 
on the farm except wheat, and, in addition 
to this, a considerable quantity of oilcake 
is fed to cattle and sheep. In this way a 
great quantity of manure is made — and it 
is good manure — not rotten straw." 

It is further stated Mr. Swan had in his 
stables and yards, eighty Leicester sheep, 
which would average 140 lbs. live weight, 
or 80 pounds dressed weight. They were 
fatted on good clover hay and eighteen 
ounces of oil-cake each per day. There 
were also eight steers, two years old this 
spring, whose average live weight was 
1,075 pounds each. They had each been 
fed one quart of ground or crushed oil- 
cake per day since last fall. The cost 
of the oil -cake was $27 per ton. — Boston 
Cultivator. 



(jrfF'A false friend is like a shadow on a 
dial ; it appears in clear weather, but van- 
ishes as soon as a cloud appears. 



762 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



Human Life. 

" In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth 
up; in the evening it is cut down and wither- 
ed."— Ps. xc, 6. 

I walked the fields of morning's prime, 
The grass was ripe for mowing; 

The skylark sang his matin chime, 
And all was brightly glowing. 

"And thus," I cried, " the ardent boy, 

His pulse of rapture beating, 
Deems life's inheritance is joy — 

The future proudly greeting." 

I wandered forth at noon: — Alas! 

On earth's maternal bosom 
The scythe had left the withering grass, 

And stretched the fading blossom. 

And thus, I thought with many a sigh, 

The hopes we fondly cherish, 
Like flowers which blossom but to die, 

Seem only born to perish. 

Once more, at eve, abroad I strayed, 
Through lonely hay-fields musing, 

While every breeze that round me played, 
Rich fragrance was diffusing. 

The perfumed air, the hush of eve, 

To purer hopes appealing, 
O'er thoughts perchance too prone to grieve 

Scattered the balm of healing. 

For thus "the actions of the just," 
When memory hath enshrined them, 

E'en from the dark and silent dust, 
Their odor leave behind them. 

I Barton's Household Verses. 



Live in Love ; 'Tis Pleasant Living. 

Be not harsh and unforgiving, 
Live in love; 'tis pleasant living. 
If an angry man should meet thee, 
And assail thee indiscreetly, 
Turn not hou again and rend him, 
Lest thou needlessly offend him; 
Shew him love hath been thy teacher, 
Kindness is a potent Preacher ; 
Gentleness is e'er forgiving, — 
Live in love; 'tis pleasant living. 

Why be angry with each other? 
Man was made to love his brother: 
Kindness is a human duty, 
Meekness a celestial beauty. 
Words of kindness spoke in season 
Have a weight with men of reason; 
Don't be others follies blaming, 
And their little failings naming; 
Charity's a cure for railing, 
Suffers much — is all prevailing. 
Courage, then, and be forgiving, 
Live in love; 'tis pleasant living. 

[British Workman. 



Ye can Conquer, if ye will. 

Rugged toiler — son of labor — 

Stoutly battling every day 
For existence — 0, my brother, 

Thou shalt triumph in the fray. 
On life's changeful scene of action, 

Though defeat may oft appear, 
Thou shalt win the victor's laurels, 

If thou wilt but persevere. 

Though thou art obscure and lowly, 

Ye may reach the wished for goal, 
Grasp the prizes, wealth and station, 

If thou hast a dauntless soul ; 
If thou hast a resolution 

That misfortune cannot shake; 
One on which the angry surges 

An impression fail to make. 

Art thou sneered at and derided 

By the self-styled lofty born? 
Heed you not the fool's contumely, 

Or the weak mind's harmless scorn. 
Art thou friendless — friends will gather, 

As do courtiers, king around, 
When thou hast achieved distinction, 

When thou hast position found. 

Strong in faith, let naught repel thee, 

Thou shalt in the end prevail ; 
In life's trials, and its battles, 

None but dastard cowards fail ; 
Noble nature prove ascendant, 

In earth's mighty contest rang, 
To renown, from dark oblivion, 

Robed in glory up they sprang. 

What if years of fierce endeavor 

Have been spent by thee in vain? 
What if thou hast met disaster? 

Up and take the field again. 
Wreck and ruin all about thee, 

Give not up, but struggle still; 
Stubborn courage is resistless, 

Ye can conquer if ye will. 

[Miner's Rural American. 

"By-and-By." 

There's a little mischief-making 

Elfin, who is ever nigh, 
Thwarting every undertaking;, 

And his name is By-and-By. 

What we ought to do this minute, 
" Will be better done," he'll cry, 

"If to-morrow we begin it;" 
"Put it off!" says By-and-By. 

Those who heed his treacherous wooing, 
Will his faithless guidance rue; 

What we always put off doing, 
Clearly we shall never do. 

We shall reach what we endeavor, 

If on Now we more rely; 
But unto the realms of Never, 

Leads the pilot By-and-By. 



INDEX. 



Agricultural Department of the General 

Government, . . .29 

Adoption of a Dog by a Mare, &c., . 72 

A Bill— Donating Public Lands, &c, . 104 

Asparagus, Cultivation of . . . 127 

Application of Fertilizers, . . 164 

Asparagus, Poetry of 238 
Agriculture in China, . . .281 

Army Worm, History and Habits of the 295 

Agricultural Humbug at Washington, . 309 

Artichoke — Culture, &c, . . . 316 

Asparagus, Receipt for Cooking, . . 362 

Albemarle Co., Defects in, &c, . . 432 

Agriculture, British . . . 447 
Amateur's View on Propagation of New 

Varieties of Fruit, . . . 448 

Air, Invaluable to the Soil, . . 449 

Agriculture, English Progress of . 482, 530 

Astor House Farm, A Day at the . . 485 

Apple Crop, .... 492 

Alternation of Crops, . . . 492 

Answer to Inquiry of G. G. M., . . 498 

Agriculture and Commerce, . . 513 

Ashes and the Potato Rot, . . 609 

Agriculture, American, of the Old Time, 612 

Apples, Falling .... 742 
Agricultural Society, Virginia Slate, 

Award of Premiums, . . . 743 
B. 
Breeding, In-and-in, . . .19 

Beauty an Element of Value, . . 59 

Butter, To Sweeten Rancid . . 70 
Brick Laying, . . . .98 

Butter-Making and Butter, . . 139 

Blue Grass Sod for Wheat, . . 181 

Best Age for Transplanting Fruit Trees, 167 

Butter Workers, .... 270 

Bourbon Co., Ky., Sale of Stock in . 406 

Butter, To Keep Hard and Cool, . . 407 

Boiling, Philosophy of . . 481 

Bullock, The Heaviest Ever Butchered, . 4S4 

Birds, Character and Habits of . . 502 

Bones, . . . . 512. 607 

Boiling Potatoes, .... 576 

Brunswick and Dinwiddie Club. . . 592 

Bush and Briery, Reply to . . 609 
Black Tongue, . . . .618 



Bots in Horses, 
Brandy, Origin of . 
Bless God for Rain, 
"By-and-By," 



C. 



Col. Cocke's Proprosed Donation, Objei 

tions to 

Cattle Dying from Eating Cornstalks, &c 
Cold House Grapery, ., . 
Carrot Pie, 
Clear Steep Land, . 
Cheap Board Fence, 
Cure for Chapped Hands, . 
Composition of Soils Adapted to Clover, 
Cape Jessamine, 
Culture of Domestic Animals, 
California Soap, 
Composition of Cake Produced by Press 

ing Distillery Dregs, 
Clover Seed, 
Corn Crop, . 
Chinese Sugar Cane, 
Canvass-Back Ducks, 
Clover, Frozen Out 
Curious Question, . 
Corn Crop of the West, Damage to th 
Coal Ashes, 

Cure of Itch in Half an Hour, 
Chemist in the Laundry Washing, 
Corn, Largest Yield of on Record, 
Culture of Apple Trees, 
Clear the Track for Reapers and Mowers 
Cultivation of Pea-Nuts, 
Corn Planting, 
Culture of Sugar Cane, 
Chinese Sugar Cane a Humbug, . 
Cleaning Saddles, &c„ 
Chinese Sugar Cane, 
Copperas as a Deodorizer, 
Carrying Weights, . 
Cure for Garget, 
Cultivation of Sun Flower, 
Chinch Bug, Two Remedies, 

" " Proposed Remedies, 
Cut Worms, 
Cooling Rooms, 
Com, Great Yield in South Carolina 



PAGE. 

699 
699 
704 
762 



3 

7 
21 
22 
23 
33 
42 
46 
61 
71 
87 

93 
105 
106 
129 
132 
134 
136 
137 
147 
160 
161 
184 
199 
201 
208 
209 
209 
223 
225 
239 
270 
286 
286 
290 
294 
294 
295 
307 
307 



764 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER.— INDEX. 



Corn, Report on 

Cut Worms, 

Cabbages, To Make 

Cultivating Plants while Dew is on, 

Cure for Disentery, 

Cheap Butter Cooler, 

Cracked Heels, 

Causes of Bad Wheat Return, 1856, 

Carbonic Acid in the Soil, 

Celery Culture, . 

Cultivation of Corn Crop, . 

Crops, Seasons for . 

Court Day at Paris, Kentucky, 

Cabbage Lice, How shall we Get Rid of 

Credits and Failures, 

Clover, Cultivation of . . 476, 

Capacity of Soil of This Vicinity, 

Comparative Value of Roots for Cows, 

Compost, Hog Yard 

Connection Between Moral and Agricultu 

ral Improvement, &c, 
Crops and Seasons, 
Coffee, 

Corn, Suckers Among 
Capped Hock, 

Cotton Cultivation in Africa, 
Common Errors of Farmers, 
Cows, New Way to Bring Up 
Cider from Sorguin, 
Card to Members of State Agricultural 

Society, . 
Corn, Experiments in Hybridizing 
Chemistry and its Study, . 
Clover as a Fertilizer, 
Calico Printing in the U. S., 
Cotton Planters, Item for . 
Corn, Selecting Seed . . 639, 

Comparative Economy of Spring and Fall 

Manuring, 
Com Shucking, 
Candles, 

Cows, Winter Feed for 
Centre Draught, 
Children, . 
Cholera, Hog 

Coal Trade, The Anthracite 
Card, A 
Chinese, The 
Club, Nottoway 
Circular, 
Conquer, Ye can, &c, 



Drilling of Pea Crop- 
Necessity, 



D. 

-Both a Benefit and 



307 
309 
319 
320 
328 
333 
333 
350 
357 
361 
381 
381 
405 
435 
446 
590 
477 
492 
496 

504 
510 
517 
518 
520 
524 
562 
592 
592 

593 
599 
603 
617 
626 
627 
673 

649 
6«6 
672 
691 
69S 
704 
730 
734 
738 
742 
755 
758 
762 



.17 



Dairy Management, . . .31 

Does Guano Stimulate the Soil ? . . 175 

DeBurg's Excelsior Libel Refuted, . 260 

Dairy Management, . . . 267 

Disease of White Oak and Apple Trees, 435 
Draught of Plowing at Different Depths, . 442 
Dwarf Pear Culture, . . . 508 

Do Potatoes Mix in the Hill, . . 522 

Ditch Banks, . . . .621 

Deep Cultivation, .... 662 
Dead, The Early . . . .736 

E. 
Experiments in Feeding Farm Horses, . 20 
Yield of Flour from Wheat, 20 
Exclusive Use of Guano, . . .39 

Essay on Rearing, Management, &c, of 

Horses, ..... 76 
Export of Bread Stuffs, . . .112 

Extraordinary Tobacco Bed, . . 144 

Excusatory, . , . . 168 

Enclosures, Important Amendment to 

Law of . . . . . 168 

Expensive Manure, . . .179 

Exports of U. S., . . . . 222 

Experiments — Guano, Unleached Ashes, 

&c, . . . . .258 

Experience in Surface Application of Ma- 
nure, . . . . .263 
Earth Worms, . . . .340 
English Farming, .... 437 
Economy and Order on the Farm, . 439 
" of Feeding Roots, . . 442 
Exaggeration of Amounts of Growing 

Crops, , 475 

Eggs, The Sex of . . . . 496 

Eminent Men, The Lives of . . 554 

Early Ripening Wheat, . . . 555 

Exports of Wheat to England, . . 558 

Experiments in Pulling Fodder, . . 567 

Explanatory, .... 567 

Economy of Nature, . . . 601 

Epidemic Amongst Cattle, . . 631 

Embellishments of a Country Home, . 703 
Economy, Height of 741 

F. 

Fattening Animals, . . .25 

Fowl Establishment, ... 40 

Farm Yard Manure, . . . 52 

Flowers and Women, . . .56 

Fertilizers for Fruit Trees, . . 78 

Franklin and Gypsum, . . 257, 109 

Flight of Birds, .... 159 
Fencing, . 200 

Farm House, Premium Essay on . . 226 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTE R.— INDEX. 



765 



1 



Feather Beds, Making and Preservin 

Food Prospects, 

Fish Fertilizer, New 

Fruit Trees, Summer Management of 

Field Pea Fertilizer, 

Fleas, Remedy foi . 

Functions of the Leaves and Roots *o 

Plants, 
Farmer, The 
Fruit Trees, 

Fodder, Reasons for Pulling, 
Fish Manure, Composition of 
Food, Economy of . 
Fat vs. Milk and Stamina, 
Farmer's Guide, 
Food, Cooking, for Hogs, &c, 
Falling Fruit, 

Farmer, Governor Bankson the 
Flowers, To Preserve Cut . 
Fairs, The . 
Farm, Premium 

G. 



270 
271 
352 
363 
371 
410 

415 
558 
605 
613 
622 
624 
627 
640 
651 
702 
741 
751 
754 
761 



Gearing Teams According to Princ 


;iple, 43 


Gas, Lime, Use of . 


. ' 68 


Graining and Grazing Cattle, 


166, 108 


Great Trees, 


144 


Geldings versus Brood Mares, 


165 


Good Gate, A . . • . 


. 177 


Gout in Fowls, 


211 


Glucose and Syrup, 


225 


Gooseherry Mildew, 


238 


Gearing Horses, in Reply to P., 


. 259 


Guano Trade, 


284 


Gait of the Horse, . 


. 284 


Grass, Proper Time of Cutting, 


. 348 


Grape Culture, 


. 399 


Galls, Saddle or Harness . 


516, 401 


Guano, Simple Test for 


. 448 


" Trade, a Monopoly, 


. 462 


' ; Stimulating Properties of 


473 


" Experiments with 


. 474 


Manipulated 


. 500 


Green Crops for Manure, . 


. 520 


Grape Vine and its Culture, 


. 526 


Garden, Vegetable 


. 605 


Guinea Fowl, 


. 608 


God's Laws Illustrated by Science 


. 636 


Garden, A Chinese 


. 734 


Guano, On the Simulating Propert 


les of . 737 


H. 




Horn Dust, 


16 


Hot Beds, How Made 


26 


How Much Corn or Hay is Requii 


ed, &c, 27 



How to Make Hens Lay in Winter, 
How Can Setting Hens be Taught 

&c. 
Harrowing Wheat, 
How Does Plaster of Paris Act, 
Height of Colts, . 
Hog Cholera, . . . 286. 

How to Raise Turkeys, 
Harrowing Wheat, 
Hedges, Osage Orange 
How to Treat Peach Trees, 
How to Make a Sound Shingle Roof, 
Hogs, Raising . . . 261, 

Hogs, Large 
Harvester and Stacker, 
Hop Growing. New Method of 
Hogs, Mr. Franklin Minor's 437, 433 

Hogs Fed on Bitter "Mast,"' 
House, Cleaning 
Horses, To Break Vicious . 
Horses Running a Mile a Minute 
Hay Caps, . 
Hay Caps, . 
Harness, To Save . 
Horse, Preventing, Catching Rein Under 

his Tail, 
Hogs, Feeding 
Hematuria in Cattle, 
Hogs, Good vs. Bad Breeds 
Horse, The Spanish 
Horse. Medium Sized 
Hay. Curing 

Horse Rake, The Time Test 
Hew to Kill Dogwood Trees, 
Horse, The, and How to Use Him 
Horse, The, and How Concluded 
Horse, Saddle 
Horse, Fatal Disease in 
Hay, Best Mode of Curing 
Honey Bee and Its Products, 
How to Manage a Rearing Horse, 
Hog Cholera, 
Hogs vs. Dogs, 
Horse, Arabian 
Hog Killing, 

Hints on Farm Improvement, 
Hints to Farmers, . 
Human Mind, The Wonderful Nature of 
Human Food, Fat Pork as 
Horse, Mr. Everett's Remarks on 
Humbuggery the Order of the Day 
Hill, Manuring in the 
Hope — Work — Wait, 
Hog Killing and Making Bacon, 
Horse, Dead, Uses of a 



75 



17 ; 



76 
107 
120 
138 
142 
143 
184 
185 
191 
169 
167 
176 
214 
216 
264 
264 
266 
285 
285 
296 
297 
310 

310 
335 
337 
338 
339 
339 
350 
372 
380 
383 
401 
402 
405 
414 
463 
491 
617 
627 
667 
687 
700 
701 
722 
728 
731 
736 
740 
742 
756 
759 



76G 



THE SOUTHERN PL ANTE R.— INDEX. 



Molasses, Sorghum 



I. 



Interesting Chemical Discovery, 

Imposition Upon Farmers, 

Increased Fertility of Land, 

Indian Corn Experiments, 

Is Hay Necessary for Stock, 

Iron, Mountain 

Ingall's Cow, 

Improvement in the Threshing Machine, 

Incrustation of Cereal and Other Seeds, 

Is Agriculture Declining in U. S,. 

Is Chinese Sugar Cane Poisonous to 

Horses, .... 
Impropriety of Breaking Roots, &c., 
Ink, Marking, for Linen 
Influence of Soil and Climate on Ani 

mals, .... 
Innocence, A Plea for 

J. 

Japan Pea, 

K. 
Kitchen Garden, 

L 
Long Fence, 
Lawn, The 

Lime Applied in Minimum Quantities, 
Lime Applied in Small Quantity to Red 

Lands of Madison County, 
Lime as a Fertilizer, 
Loves of the Birds, The 
Lameness in Horses, 
Letter from Japhet| 
Locust Trees, How to Raise 
Lard Candle, How to Make 
Laying Farm Yard Dung on Clay Fallow 

&c. .... 

Long Island Prize Farm, . 
Lahor a Duty, . . 

Life, The of a Farmer 
Lime, .... 

Lirne, How to Apply 
Lard Cured with Soda, 
Library, A Farmer's 
Lime, Action of 
Life, Human 
Love, Live in, &c, 

M. 

Merinos at Universal Exhibition, 1857, 
Mechanism of Steam Culture, 
Multuin in Parvo, . 
Mechanical Value of Bones. 



720 

29 
81 
141 
302 
347 
353 
406 
451 
453 
478 

480 
569 
598 

602 
715 

33 

123 

22 

63 

105 

131 
181 
158 
213 
215 
218 
236 

386 
487 
497 
500 
589 
604 
688 
693 
757 
762 
762 

7 
10 
22 
24 



the Soil, 



Mulching and Stirrin 

Mares vs. Geldings, 

Manure Spreader Wanted, 

Malie Acid, 

Mules and Mule Breeding, 

Machinery to Aid Farmers, 

Manures, Best Mode of Applying 

Manures, Artificial 

Manuring Apple Trees, 

Musk Melon, 

Milk, To Prevent Cows from Losing 

McCormick's Reaper, 

Milk. Quantity of, to Pound of Butter 

Musquitoes, Antidote to 

Moths in Carpets, . 

Manures, Vegetable and Animal . 

Milk. Facts About 

Manures, Economy, &e„ of 

Music of Labor, 

Manuring, Fall or Spring . 

Mules, .... 

N. 
Nutrition of Plants, 
Negroes and Cotton, 
New Method of Governing Vicious Ani 

mals, .... 
North Devon, the Proper Cattle for the 

South, .... 
New Process for Preserving Timber, 
New Plan for Ploughing Flat Land, 
Nutrition of Plants, 
Nottoway County, Report of Agricultural 

Survey, . 
New Apple, 
New York in the Light of an Exp 

tal Farm, 
Nurseries, Staunton 

O 

Ornithology, 

On Cutting off Large Limbs, of Fruit 

Trees, 
Ornithological Sketches, 
Orchard Grass, 
Origin of Various Plants, . 
Ornithological Sketches. — No. 2. 
Ornithological Sketches. — No. 3, 
Oats and Other Exhausters of the 
Oats, Seed . 
Ornamental Gardening, 
Onion, Nutritious Qualities of 
Ox-Breeze Fly, 
Overseer's Rules, . 
Overseer's, All About 
Ocerseers, Short Letters to 



68 
90 
100 
112 
151 
217 
237 
240 
262 
320 
384 
393 
408 
410 
442 
495 
526, 592 



583, 614, 641, 705 
640 
651 
692 



34 

76 

83 

83 

89 

94 

193 

231 
315 

514 
737 

65 



88 

105 

180, 106 

122 

321, 145 

298, 202 

. 207 

. 207 

. 311 

. 362 

. 408 

410, 557 

. 411 

. 413 



Soil, 



THE SOUTHERN P L A N T E R . — INDEX. 



767 



Original Domestic Receipts, . . 479 

Orchard Grass, .... 596 

Origin of the Stocking Frame, . . 606 

Ornithological, .... 620 

Oil From a New Source, . . • 671 

P. 
Past and Present, . . .23 

Potato always uncertain, . . 28 

Profits of Fruit Culture at the South, . 42 
Produce on hand, . . . .69 

Prospects for Produce, . . .69 

Present and Past of Implements of Agri- 
culture, . . . . .91 
Projet for the Executive Committee, &c. 113 
Poultry, Vermin on ... 134 
Paper Money, . . . .135 
Papers Communicated by Nottoway Club, 148 
Do. No. Carolina Agricultural Society, 161 
Proper mode of Gearing Horses, . . 165 
Pickles for Market, . . .190 
Poultry, In and In Breeding, &c, . 212 
Prices, ..... 221 
Peabody's Prolific Corn, . . . 252 
Par of Exchange, the, . . . 280 
Pickled Fodder, . . . .282 
Pure Air, ..... 283 
Paint, A cheap, .... 283 
" Sulphurized Oil, . . . 283 
Plantation Roads, . . . 291 
Profits on Grazing Cattle, . . 302 
Parker, Dr., Against the World, . . 307 
Pickles, ...-. 332 
Produce of butter, . . . 333 
Provisions, Prices, . . . 357 
Plugging Trees with Brimstone, . . 359 
Practical Hints to Amateurs, . . 358 
Potatoes Mealy all Summer, . . 362 
Peach Borer plastered up, . . 362 
Pruning. Chapter on, . . . 367 
Phosphatic Manures for Wheat and Clover, 373 
Potato Weavil, .... 409 
Premium List Virginia State Society, 6th 

Exhibition, . 417 

Pasture Lands, . . . .515 

Preserving Fence Posts, . . * . 523 

Plants and how they live, . . 547 

Preserving dried Fruit from Moths, . 576 

Pig, Seasonable Hints on, . . 600 

Propagation by Cuttings, . . . 606 

Pedlar Hole and Corner Club, . .513 

Progression, . . . 625 

Profitable Forty Acre Farm, . . 625 

Plough, Premium Essay on, ' . . 655 

Poultry, Winter Care of, . . . 660 



Progressive Agriculture, . 

Phosphates, occurrence in some of the tei 

tiary deposits of Virgina, 
Potatoes, Sweet, how to keep, 
Profession, Agriculture as a, 
Perseverance, 

R. 

Recipe for Making Soap, 

Romain's Steam Cultivator, 

Roofs and Roofing, 

Rabbits, to keep from Barking Trees, 

Raising Hogs, - . 

Rhododendron Maximum, 

Reply to Fertilizers for Fruit Trees, 

Report to Fanners' Assembly, 

Rhubarb, its culture and uses, 

Reapers and Mowers, clear the track for, 

Reply to Roofs and Roofing, 

Randall Grass, 

Reply to Yardley Taylor on Soil Analysis 

Rhodes' Super Phosphate Lime, - 

Reflections on Fruit Crop present year 

Root Pruning and Manuring, 

Robin, Its food and habits, 

Renovating Wearing apparel, 

Romaine's Steam Cultivator, 

Road Scraper, Diagonal, 

Root Crops for Stock, 

Remedy for Striped Bug, . 

Repulsion of yellow Bug from Pumpkin, 

Rezoil, .... 

Reapers, Cautions about using, Reply to X 

of the Republican, 
Rhodes' Super Phosphate of Lime, 
Rain, • . . . 

Ruta Bagas, &c. . , 

Rust on Oats, 
Rainy Days, employment, 
Rats, To destroy, 
Rags, 

Rain, Philosophy of, 
Royal Agricultural 

Chester, . 
Receipts, Domestic, 



Society's Dinner at 



S. 

Southern Literary Messenger, 
Stock Breeding of any kind, 
Shall it always continue thus? 
Shoeing Horses — Good plan of, 
Surface Manuring, 
Southdown Sheep, . 
Sugar from the Sorghum, . 
Sub Soil, Ploughing in Clarke, 
Stock Breeders, to, 
Seasonable Suggestions, 
Sheep Shearing Machine, 

Do. Fine, 
Stallions, Fine, 

Stock Running at Large and Fenci 
Shall Apple Trees be Manured, 
Soil Analysis, 
Strangles, Remedy for, 
Swallows Against Flies, . 
Sassafras, Clearing Land of, 
Soapsuds for Currant Bushes, 
Suggestions About the Purchase of Reapers, 



»?, 



703 

712 
721 
751 
752 



30 
40 
73 
76 
111 
144 
182 
170 
188 
201 
201 
239 
258 
264 
317 
318 
327 
331 
342 
346 
354 
357 
360 
366 

378 
434 
441 
488 
499 
522 
592 
598 
605 

632 

702 



7 

36 
61 
102 
103 
105 
106 
110 
111 
122 
160 
167 
174 
174 
178 
182 
219 
220 
737 
239 
246 



763 



THE SOUTHERN P L A N T E R .— INDEX. 



Salt, as a Preventive to Rot in Tobacco, 20 1 

Spring Chickens, .... 269 
Southdown Sheep, . . 377.293 

Seed, .... 379-301 

Sowing Peas, .... 320 

Smoke for Wounds on Animals, . . 339 

Soapsuds Effectual vs. Bed Bugs, . . 340 

Stacking Hay and Grain, . .34 9 

Shepherds of the Pyrennes, . . 355 

Sulphur for Insects, . . . 359 

Seed, Quick Vegetation of, . . 366 

Societies, Virginia State and Central Ag- 
ricultural, .... 370 
Still Chopping the Roots, • . . 380 
Stone Fencing, .... 433 
Soapsuds, ..... 436 
Sheep, Culture of, ... 456 
Stacking Hay and Grain, . . . 478 
Slaughter that Daily Sustains, the, . 492 
Salutatory, .... 497 
Soiling Cattle, Green Rye for, . . 498 
Spayed Cows, .... 509 
Sun" Flower, the,. . . . .512 
Striped Bugs, . . . . 523 
Strawberries, Chapter on, . . 527 
Sugar, Theory of High Prices, . . 536 
Swine, Paper on, .... 559 
Soils, Difference in, . . . 561 
Soil, the, . . . . .575 
Stock, Pernicious influence of Watery 

Food,&c. .... 597 

Sheep, Value of, to Farmers, . 611-671 

Smut in, Wheat, Remedy for, . .611 

Sheaf, the, . . . . .621 

Seasons and Crops of Present Year, . 627 

Stock Feeding, Winter, . . . 670 

" Evils of Over-Feeding, . . 672 

Soils, Physical Properties of, . . 674 

Sweet Potatoes, .... 694 
Sewing Machine, .... 700 
Snow Ball Pudding, . . .701 

Scatter the Germs of the Beautiful, . 704 

Soap, a Hard and Durable, . . 736 

Sociability, .... 740 

Society, Virginia State Agricultural, Award 

of Premiums, .... 743 
Subscribers, in Arrears, . . . 754 

T. 
Tea Cakes, .... 9 

True Principles of Hitching Teams, . 44 
Thinning Forests, •. . . .70 

Tea Drinking, .... 86 

Toinatoc Culture, . . . .89 

Tyro Answered, . . . .121 

Tobacco Analysis, . . .137 

Tribute to the Planter, . . . 147 

Trade in the Horns of Animals, . . 206 

Tomatoes, . . . . .238 

Threshing Machines, Steam Power, . 279 

Twins, Free Martin's Enquiry, . . 285 

Ton True, . . . . .290 

Transactions of N. Y. State Ag'l Soc'y, . 29:: 
Tobacco Question, . . 387, 400 

Tobacco, Fine Sale of . . 394 

Trees and Fruit Buds vs. Cold Water, . 396 
Tobacco Exchange, . 467, 469, 471, 570 

Tulcyries Artesian Well, &c, . 509 

Tobacco Prizing, . . . .519 



Tobacco Charcoal for Firing, 


565, 595 


Telegraph, At antic 


.« 635 


Time, Difference of 


. 636 


The Teeth, Keeping Clean 


. 702 


The Tongue of Poverty, . 


702 


Tomatoes, green, how to Pickle" . 


: 712 


Tobacco, .... 


717 


Table, a . 


723 


Tea, .... 


. 724 


u. 




Utility of Birds and Snakes, 


. 336 


Unhealthy Position of the Body, . 


. 603 


University of Va., 


639 


Untie t'he Hame String, 


. 699 


V. 




Veterinarian, The . 


. 138 


Vinegar, How to Make 


. 332 


Valedictory, 


. 387 


Vegetation, Powers of, to Resist Ex 




tremes, &c, 


. 397 


Vines. How to Protect from Bugs, 


. 490 


Vegetable Physiology, 


538 


Value of Agricultural Papers, 


. 568 


Vegetables as Fertilizers, . 


. 577 


Volume, our Next 


. 753 


W. 




Wood sold in Small Quantities, . 


82 


Wire Fence, . 


87 


Washing, . ... 


88 


Western Hog Trade, 


. 102 


Wood, Preserving by " Steeps," . 


110 


Window Gardening, 


160 


Wool Trade, . . 


211 


Wagon Body, 


236 


Watermelons, Culture in Hanover, 


254 


Wool, Chapter on . . 


273 


Wool, .... 


276 


Washing Sheep, Philosophy of 


278 


Wheat Prospect, 


310 


Winter, Preparations for . 


328 


Wheat Midge, . . . . 


341 


When Corn Grows, 


357 


Wine, Currant, . 


366 


Wash your Fruit Trees, 


368 


Watering Plants, . . 


369 


Wheat, White and Red, . 


393 


Whortleberries, . 


395 


What is Silica? . . . . 


441 


What England Eates from Abroad, 


491 


Wheat Market, . . . 


* 501 


Whitewash, First rate 


521 


Wonders of Boiling Water, 


524 


Words to Young Farmers, 


573 


Wash Boards, War Against, 


592 


Who would not be a Farmer, 


599 


Waterproofs, . . . . 


653 


Water — Its Importance in Vegetation, 


653 


Wea\ il in Seed Wheat, 


663 


Wheat, Rust in .... 


664 


Wheal Crop, .... 


687 


Wheat Crop, Mr. Winston's 


719 


Wine, the Preservation of 


733 


Wealth, the Best .... 


735 


Wine, to make pure Apple 


735 


Wool and Woolens, 


738 


Wife, Co-operation of the 


751 



SOUTHERN PLANTER.— ADVERTISING SHEET. 




FOR THE 
CELEBRATED PREMIUM 

IRON CYLINDER 

Grain Drill, 

iti tie Improved Guano Attachment and Grass Seed Sower. 




PATENTED IN 1856 AND 1858. 




MANUFACTURED BY 



BICKFORD & HUFFMAN, 

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND. 

rhose wishing this article, and one that is universally acknowledged bv the Farmers of the South, North 
Itl'JSiy 1 have exam.ned ,t, to be the best ever offered to the public, will bear in mind th,t un- 

they older early, may be disappointed, as hundreds were last season, by delay 



I TUBE DRILL, 



PRICES, 



Guano Attachment, 
Grass Seed Sower, 



$90 00 
85 00 
" - 80 00 

Ml Orders promptly filled and information given, by application to 

n , „ nn ni 1 o General Agent for the' Southern States, 

Office, JSio. 90 S. Charles Street, between Pratt aad Camden, Baltimore, Mch 
ale by CHURCH & FLEMING, Agents, Richmond, Va. 



$25 00 
10 00 



CLATTTIOlSf. 

Notice is hereby given to all whom it may concern : That this is to forbid all persons making vending- 
or infringing upon our Guano or Compost Attachment, patented April 22d, 1856, re-issued Mav 18th 
Any person violating our rights, will beheld accountable. None genuine except manufactured bv 
here they can be had on application to C F. CORSER, our General Agent, at No 90 S Ch-irlea 
t, Baltimore, Md., or to agents appointed to sell the same by said Corser. 
)tember 1858.— ly . BICKFORD & HUFFMANN, 



SOUTHERN PLANTER— ADVERTISING SHEET. 



Corner of Grace and Foushee Streets, RICHMOND, VA. 

The next Session of this Institution will open on the FIRST DAY OF OCTOBER, 18; 
and close on the First Day of July, 1859. 

TERMS FOR THE SCHOLASTIC YEAR, 



For Board, - - - $200 

For Washing, - - - 20 

For Lights, 

For English Tuition, 

For Modern Languages, (each,) 

For French, when studied exclusively of 

the English branches, 
For Latin, --'..-- 
For Music on Piano, Harp, Guitar, Or- 
gan or Singing : 

For one lesson (of an hour) a week, 



6 
40 
20 

40 

20 



40 



For two lessons (of an hour) a week, 
For three lessons (of an hour) a week, 
For four lessons (of an hour) a week, 

For the use of Piano, 

For Drawing, from Models, 

For Drawing, from Nature, 

For Painting in Water Colors, 

For Oil Painting, 

Primary Department— ^for Children un- 
der 11 years of age, 



$ 



12) 

161 

I 

2( 
4( 
41 
5« 

3( 



REFERENCES: 

The Patrons of the School. — Right Rev. Bishop Meade, Right Rev. Bishop Johns, Right Re* 
Bishop Elliott of Georgia, Right Rev. Bishop Cobbs of Alabama, Rev. Moses D. Huge, D, 
D., Rev. Charles H. Read, D. D., Rev. T. V. Moore, D. D., Rev. B. Gildersleve. The Cier d 
of the Episcopal Church in Virginia. 

HUBEET P. IEFEBVRE, A. M„ Principal. 



Rev. H. S. Keppler, 
William G. Williams, a. m. 
John P. Little, M. D. 
R. A. Lewis, M. D. 
Eliodoro Camps, 



John A. Calyo, 
C. W. Thilow, 
W. F. Grabau, 
Mrs. A. E. J. Gibson, 
Miss Mary Gordon, 
MAD'ELLE L. VILLEMET, French Governe 
All letters to be directed to Hubert P. Lefebvre, Richmond, Va 



Miss E. Bartlett, 
Mrs. M. Taylor, 
Mad'me M. Estvan, 
Mad'elle Lacy, 
Charles II. Roseen, 



[July '58— ly 



PAINTS. PAINTS. PAINTS. 

PURCELL, LADD & CO, 



UOGHSTS, 

No. 122 Main Street, corner 13th, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, 

Offer at low prices, a large and well assorted stock of articles in their line — embracing 

PAINTS, COLORS, VARNISHES, OILS, &C. 



J 



LEWIS' WHITE LEAD, 

NEW J. WHITE ZINC, Horsehead brand, 
CHROME GREEN, 
VEKDIGRIS. 

TERRA DI SIENNA, 
LINSEED OIL, 



MACHINE OIL, 
PARIS GREEN, 
CHROME YELLOW, 
TURKEY UftlBKE, 
LAMP OILS, 
SPTS. TURPENTINE. 



All Colors for Painters, Coach Makers, and others, Dry and in Oil, Paint Brushes, Sand Paper, and a very 

large stock of best 

WINDOW GJ^J^SS, 

omprising nearly every size made. We are also prepared to take orders for Imported 

Polished Plate, Sky Light and Ornamental Glass. 

f^f Particular attention to packing and forwarding all goods— and the qunlitv warranted. 

PURCELL, LADD & CO, Druggists, 
June 1853. 122 Muin Street, Richmond.